IMF Forecasts Low Growth, High Debts and Prices (tags)
Ahead of IMF, World Bank and G20 Meetings, IMF Head Delivers Views on Global Economy
Capitalism can't overcome the laws of physics (tags)
That humanity can dominate nature “is an illusion.” The laws of thermodynamics remain in place. “Consequently, a growth-centered capitalist economy finds itself trapped in futile attempts to completely decouple itself from nature — aiming for a 100% circular, service-oriented and zero-waste existence.
The Enemy and the Libidinal Economy of the Apocalypse (tags)
The West continues to avoid introspection by invoking the Other as pure evil. While the terminal crisis of capitalist civilization is truly global, and no emancipatory model can be seen on the geopolitical chessboard, it is also evident that today’s anti-Russian sentiment stems from a consolidated ideological framework. To West, Russians have always been an inferior race,
Multiple crisis and catastrophe (tags)
The official self-image of bourgeois society remains strangely untouched by crises. They are understood as improbable and short-lived interruptions of what are actually successful processes. Disruptions and crises are denied, are considered technical and, through a variety of individual measures, if not solvable, then at least postponable into the future.
Trump and the Danger of Fascism (tags)
Peace is the imperative that should outweigh escalation and the unspeakable risk of global war! The constitutional state must not be confused with the security state or the emergency state as Rousseau and the social contract must not be confused with Thomas Hobbes and the punishing or fearsome state. People would fight endlessly without the state or Leviathan, he said.
A look back makes the outlook easier: A speculative boom in 1929 leads to a stock market crash and recession, the budget deficit increases, the austerity policies drive the economy into a depression. Tensions within and between countries increase, scapegoats are sought, anti-Semitism and protectionism are spreading.
Our Zone of Interest: The Noise of Permanent Warfare (tags)
Wars (especially when marketed as humanitarian, defensive, or “against terror”) are, in essence, criminal means to “easy money”, which is what keeps today’s financial bubbles inflated to record-breaking highs while the actual economic conditions of millions of workers (or “inactive workforce”) are cratering at an equally record-breaking pace.
The sun is setting in the West (tags)
The West's misjudgement also applies to the course of the war, where the Russian army is advancing again after the failed counter-offensive in Ukraine. There is a shortage of weapons, ammunition and soldiers. The strategy of wearing down the West seems to be working. In the US, the Biden administration is already encountering difficulties in mobilizing further war credits.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy (tags)
The orchestrators of this global coup must be credited with a certain sadistic brilliance. Their sleight of hand succeeded, perhaps even beyond expectations. However, any power aiming at totalization is destined to fail, and this applies also to the high priests of the Covid religion and the institutional puppets they have mobilized to roll out the psyop.
A Phuilosopher's Critique (tags)
Because the declining middle classes are unable to see past individualism and economic self-interest, they stick with the fantasy that any loss of purchasing power is a temporary glitch awaiting systemic resolution – as if Capital were an eternal and inexhaustible mode of wealth creation.
Saving the planet means saving the world (tags)
Instead of today’s economic system, which increases inequality, a new system is indispensable, according to Rockström and colleagues. What is needed is a ‘wellbeing economy’ which serves people and the planet—rather than people and the planet serving the economy, as the Wellbeing Economic Alliance (WeAll) puts it.
The indispensable opponent (tags)
The West's hostility towards China has increased since China's engine began to stutter. At the same time, the US government is pumping massive amounts of money into the economy and has thus been able to prevent an impending recession for the time being, but is far from regaining its former role as a global engine of growth.
The Looming War Against China (tags)
In the United States, in the wake of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy & state-undermining deregulation, & Bill Clinton's "Third Way" takeover by Wall Street, there was an equally devastating shift of wealth & income to the finance, insurance & real estate (FIRE) sector. The "Third Way" was financial capitalism that made its profits by exploiting & indebting industry and labor.
IMF and World Bank Meetings Wrestle with Low Growth, High Interest Rates, Debt Crises and (tags)
As world leaders arrive for the Annual IMF and World Bank Meetings, the IMF forecasts the global economy to grow 3% this year, which remains below the average of growth for the two decades before the pandemic.
Jubilee USA Statement on IMF World Economic Outlook Report (tags)
As world leaders arrive in Marrakesh for the Annual IMF and World Bank Meetings, the IMF releases its flagship World Economic Outlook report. The IMF projects the global economy to grow 3% this year, which remains below the average of growth for two decades before the pandemic.
World Leaders Focus on High Debt Levels and Poor Economic Growth as Morocco Meetings Begin (tags)
World leaders, finance ministers, business groups, academics and development organizations descend on Marrakesh, Morocco, for the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings. IMF head Kristalina Georgieva reports that the global economy lost $3.7 trillion due to shocks since 2020 and that slow and unequal growth continues.
IMF Speaks: World Economy Loses $3.7 Trillion Due to Pandemic and Economic Shocks (tags)
As World Leaders Head to Morocco, IMF Leader Raises Growth and Debt Challenges
Social doctrine versus sacred market (tags)
In his new work "Out of Ego-Capitalism", the development economist &consultant at the UN Organization for World Trade and Development Patrick Kaczmarczyk takes a path of capitalism criticism. Referring to Christian social teaching, he attacks the "belief in the blessing of the sacred market," which goes hand in hand with the "individualization of problems."
Happy Anti-War Day! - September 1 - Say No! (tags)
War always has two losers. Neither side can win the Ukraine war. Russia will not lose a war of attrition. Ukraine lacks recruits, artillery and time!
African socialism & the common good economy are discussed. In view of the problems we face in our society today, triggered by the striving for power of the elites leading to social inequality, environmental destruction & corporate greed, there are good reasons to practice the common good economy as an alternative & sustainable economic model more strongly worldwide.
Is the USa Failed State with Michael Hudson (tags)
It’s a failed state because its economy is paralyzed and we’re in a debt deflation, an economic polarization, that is just transferring all wealth and income away from labor, away from industry, into really the financial sector and what I call the finance, insurance, and real estate sector.
"The war in Ukraine is a war for the dollar" - part 2 of 3 (tags)
Moscow has really threatened the U.S. dollar on the international stage, and with it the entire U.S. economy behind it. Since Putin took office, well before 2021 and even before the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine in 2014, Russia, a leading energy power, has begun the process of liquidating U.S. dollar-denominated bonds. Russia halved the number of U.S. bonds it held.
China's further development has priority (tags)
The focus of Chinese policy remains the economic and social development of the country... Despite the enormous successes in economic and social development, there is still a long way to go before China catches up and can also keep up with the rich industrialized countries
The end of the "Golden Age" of cqapitalism and the rise of neoliberalism (tags)
The rise of the neoliberal world economic system marked by the dominance of financial markets – whose financial superstructure collapses over us – resulted from the radical economic crises of the early 1970s that seized nearly all western industrial countries.
Michael Hudson on de-dollarization (tags)
Krugman is saying that other people have no reason at all for what they’re doing. And when they move out of the dollar, there’s no reason for them to do it. If you read what these countries say, they explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. .
Brazil's Lula travels to China and calls to end US dollar dominance (tags)
“Why can’t a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries?" he continued. "It’s difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency".
Why the US Bank Crisis is Not Over (tags)
There must always be a financial crash at some point. That is because interest-bearing debt grows exponentially, but the economy follows an S-curve and then turns down. And when the economy turns down... the magnitude of financial claims on the economy exceeds the ability to pay.
Senile Economics: Bubble Ontology and the Pull of Gravity (tags)
The entire banking system is closing in on folding, which is why it so desperately needs new inflationary liquidity to keep afloat. The Great Reset is our owners’ authoritarian attempt to respond to this systemic threat by taking control of the collateral (our lives).
Pause for Thought: Money without Value in a Rapidly Disintegrating World (tags)
The tanking economy is the cause of these “misfortunes”. What we are sold as external threats is in fact the ideological projection of the internal limit of capitalist modernity. In systemic terms, emergency addiction keeps the comatose body of capitalism artificially alive
Davos: Crises, Developing Country Debt, WB Forecasts (tags)
World Bank Cuts Global Growth Forecast as Developing Countries Struggle with Debt
Rethinking the State and Rent Madness (tags)
The right to housing for everyone must be understood as a public challenge and presupposes the de-commodification of the housing supply, a democratization of urban policy, and breach with the real estate exploitation coalition.
Who can afford capitalism anymore? and Why are prices rising? (tags)
When the state now debates the need to create relief packages for employees, pensioners, unemployment benefit recipients, trainees and families, this is official confirmation that the result of wage labor is also poverty. The majority of citizens find themselves in a dual role...
Let the advertising die! (tags)
Advertising leads to useless purchases because it often persuades consumers to have needs instead of satisfying existing desires. This leads to excessive consumption of resources and materials and thus damages the environment.
IMF Predicts Global Economy to Lose $4 Trillion (tags)
The global economy is more fragile noted IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.
Pandemic and the Policy Roots of a Steady State Economy (tags)
We are in the midst of a radical disruption and nurturing the roots of a just transition. Whichever way events unfold over the coming years, it’s clear that returning to the pre-pandemic status quo is less realistic and more difficult than embracing the change that’s well underway.
Only a progressive tax revolution can stop the climate collapse (tags)
There is an urgent need for a pluralistic opening of the economic sciences, so that the argumentative dispute about the ethically correct interpretation of market-competitive interaction relations and the status of market logic again becomes a normal part of economic discourse.
Spiral downward and No exit! (tags)
The austerity dictates imposed on the Eurozone are only exacerbating the crisis they are supposed to be fighting. The austerity measures are leading to a collapse in domestic demand.
The lure of unreason and The crisis profiteers (tags)
The essence of transhumanism is pathological. This ideology is carried by psychopaths and narcissists. Such people love only themselves, their infallibility and uniqueness. The others are only mass. Mass is despised by "the unique".
Hysterical Populism and the Appetite of Leviathan (tags)
The relationship between economy and social order has been turned upside down: economy is no longer a function of an overarching culture, but conversely, "human society has sunk to being an accessory of the economic system" (Karl Polanyi). RK was founder of Exit & Krisis blogs.
95 Theses Against the Rule of the Financial Markets (tags)
The financial markets have made themselves independent of the real economy. As the selling of indulgences led to Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517, the rule of speculative financial markets has led to revenue shortfalls of US cities and states. Tax havens hide between $22-33 trillion.
Myths of the Crisis and Enemy Images in the Media (tags)
The Ukrainian ambassador was quoted in the FAZ as saying: "All Russians are now our enemies". This rhetoric is classic enemy image cultivation... This homogenization is so pre-Enlightenment and always wrong.
Interview on The Black Book of Capitalism (tags)
The book is: 1) a history of the three great industrial revolutions (introduction of the manufacturing system with the steam engine at the beginning of the 19th century, Fordist “self-mobilization” with the assembly line and the rationalization and the microelectronic revolution.
Can economy and ecology be reconciled? (tags)
The Corona-related shutdown, imposed by the state and whose effects are to be dampened by the state with enormous sums of money, will go down in history as the classic example of how states create unhappiness and unemployment with unilateral interventions in the economy.
The Curse of Financial Entrepreneurship (tags)
We are not prisoners of bad decisions made in the past. We can and should rein in Wall Street, break up its five giant “too-big-to-fail” banks, support local and state banks, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act’s divide between investment & commercial banking, tax all financial transactions
Bidenomics, One Year Later (tags)
The Center for American Progress takes a different approach, examining the successes of President Biden’s bold economic policies and calling for the continuation and expansion of those policies in the years ahead by making permanent expansions to the safety net.
A good future beyond the market and the state (tags)
In the midst of a blindly globalized society, we are atomized workers and consumers divided by competition, who are in contact with each other primarily through monetary and labor relations and only exceptionally and temporarily represent common interests. We become increasingly helpless...
Corona crisis turns into social crisis and The Taboo in Glasgow (tags)
"We are about to drive the world to the wall at full speed." Glasgow creates only lukewarm symptom therapy The example shows that hardly anyone dares to seriously name and research the basic problems of economic growth and population growth.
The Endgame of Capitalism (tags)
I develop a positive vision for a system change in part four. Before that, however, the question is raised how the corporations envision the system change: Their way of wanting to preserve their power after the inevitable collapse of the Ponzi-scheme of financial capitalism is a transition from free-market capitalism to feudalism.
Is China in danger of collapse? and Anti-economics and anti-politics (tags)
In the process of modernization, the relationship between market and state can be boiled down to the formula of a general law: the more market, the more state... The bloated market and the bloated state can only live or die together.
There is an alternative to maximizing profits (tags)
In a new encyclical, the Pope denounces the pursuit of profit. The Sonntagszeitung spoke about this with the business ethicist Peter Ulrich. He defends the Holy Father, criticizes the managers and calls for economy for fifth graders..Financial products seek to make money out of money, without the inconvenient real economy.
Renaissance of the Social Market Economy (tags)
A social market economy is based on two political pillars: (1) taming the market dynamics via regulation and (2) mitigating its consequences in distribution policy. (3) The development and care of an economic culture of moderation and fairness in dealing with one another forms the third, the cultural pillar of taming and civilizing
Overcoming the epidemic of loneliness (tags)
The planet can do without human beings, but humanity cannot do a second without the planet. A subsystem can never dominate the superordinate system, nor can it grow indefinitely within it. For this simple reason, the two central premises of industrial society - endless growth and domination of nature - are deadly illusions.
The Endgame of Capitalism: Introduction (tags)
This economic system is permanently out of joint. Interest rates have been virtually zero for over a decade, despite the fact that many consider interest a considered a cornerstone of the capitalist system. The central banks are pumping money into the system on an unprecedented scale, but this is not resulting in inflation.
Economic Crisis in the Anthropocene (tags)
They are in a life-and-death struggle for the future of American democracy and from their point of view – and I happen to share this view – that depends on their not losing the congressional majority to the GOP in 2022, which doesn’t necessarily end American democracy, but it takes us in a direction which is really bad.
For a democratic polarization (tags)
The new world economic crisis has shown yet again that one can't leave it to the market to provide for a strong economy. In any case, it is a truism that a community with a certain quality of life depends to a great extent on resources that the market does not produce.
Beyond market and state (tags)
The dominant, financial market-oriented factions of capital are using the crisis to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by attempting to appropriate even the wealth of society that is yet to be generated in the medium term by indebting the state.
Rescue Plan of the Biden Administration (tags)
Thanks to the rescue plan, the US economy is expected to grow faster than at any time since 1984. The rest of the world will also benefit. Families with children will receive tax rebates. 70% of Americans are in favor of the plan.
Corona containment and capital utilization (tags)
In the Corona crisis, it became obvious that our capitalist economic system is not suited to protect human life. There must finally be an end to eternal growth, the exploitation of nature and people and the shortage of time, an end to "more & more, faster & faster and further & further."
Workout. The Crisis of Labor and the Limits of Capitalist Society (tags)
The Third Industrial Revolution represents a qualitative break in the history of productivity growth. This is because microelectronics facilitated a radical reorganization in production overall such that labor lost the central importance that it previously had and the application of knowledge became the main force.
The present crisis means that, to a degree previously undreamt of, ever-greater numbers of human beings will simply be declared “superfluous.” The much-invoked “new role of the state” has not the slightest chance of recreating a 1960s style social welfare capitalism, with full employment and a rising standard of living.
An economy that does not grow can nevertheless always change and even improve in the process. It can become more ecological, for example. Last year, for example, CO2 emissions fell by almost six percent - more than at any time since the Second World War.
Criminal banks and criminal capitalism (tags)
Since the 1970s, the real economy and the financial economy have been increasingly diverging. Gigantic assets vagabond around the globe, desperately looking for profitable investment opportunities.
Lessons from the First New Deal for the Next One (tags)
Chicago School Economists Got it Wrong. Strong Antitrust Policy Boosts the Economy (tags)
When mergers increase market concentration, we know that competition has been harmed even if to a small extent. Since this is the case, it makes sense to ask the merging parties to establish that the merger will provide benefits to the economy.
Top Economist: As Pandemic Recedes, a Chance to Rethink Unemployment (tags)
The Chamber of Commerce, for example, has pushed the U.S. to stop expanded unemployment insurance benefits so that people will be forced to return to low-wage jobs. Some Republican-dominated states have jumped on board with this idea.
Shrinkage means the voluntary downsizing of the national economy, including a reduction in gross domestic product. "Voluntary" here indicates a preference for voluntaristic solutions - though not as individualistic and unplanned where well-to-do opt out of the consumerist market model.
What moves the "Generation Greta"? (tags)
The global economy is in free fall. Social life and public debate are largely paralyzed, the usual protest and organizing formats of the social movements are completely blocked. Decisive decisions are made in the mode of emergency decrees and huge rescue packages. The politically unthinkable becomes possible,
We are all social democrats now. Almost all of us (tags)
A few weeks ago, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said rich households should pay higher taxes. Inequality in income and wealth had reached proportions that threatened social peace. The head of the IMF, Alfred Kammer, called on the German government, as in previous years, to increase its investments.
Austerity's Hidden Purpose & From California Economics to Bidenomics (tags)
For governments pursuing austerity, spending cuts mean lower national income and fewer taxes. Unlike a household or a business, if the government cuts its spending during tough times, it is cutting its revenues, too.
Why Karl Polanyi Still Matters (tags)
In The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi explains why the economy must be embedded in society and society must not be embedded in the economy. He describes land, labor and money as "fictitious commodities" since they cannot be multiplied and created on the market.
Post-democratic Capitalism (tags)
The fact that money can buy political influence is a central problem for democracy. All citizens are equal in terms of their voting rights, but not in terms of their wealth - this is one of the great unsolved challenges of liberal systems of government.
There is currently no alternative to national debt (tags)
A private economy left to its own devices is completely incapable of immanently combating the crisis. This is especially true for future-oriented investments for ecological modernization that serve climate protection. The vaccine against Covid-19, which will apparently be available shortly, would not exist without govt funding.
Why capitalism compels renunciation and we could work less (tags)
How much human and natural resources are squandered on taxation, trade and advertising, how much on labor administration, justice, police, prisons, armaments, military? How many people work overtime without end, suffer heart attacks and burnout, wear themselves out in the brutal competition?
New Prosperity. Is a paradigm-shift necessary given the limits of economic growth? (tags)
Politicians and economists have adhered to the principle of steady growth. One possible explanation may be that "central areas of society, politics and the economy.... are existentially dependent on constant growth"
Many Crises-One System: Counter Power in Catastrophe Capitalism (tags)
A revolution does not come out of nowhere, but emerges from the struggles in the here and now. The point is that we can only fight for social or ecological progress against capitalist principles.
The US economy needs Joe Biden (tags)
The economic and socio-political record of US President Donald Trump is devastating. Wages stagnated even before the Corona crisis. Instead, the national debt increased because he lowered taxes for the rich - without any economic benefit. Joe Biden knows the reasons for the misery and knows what to do.
Debts are not a problem (tags)
The Democrats have learned from their mistakes. This time they want a big stimulus package to invest in infrastructure and climate protection. This change in sentiment is partly thanks to Keynesians like Paul Krugman, who have always called for government investment when the economy is paralyzed.
Is Trump failing in the fight against the pandemic and the shattered economy? (tags)
The state of the economy is rightly considered the most important factor influencing the re-election or de-election of an American president. Voters* tend to blame the leader in the Oval Office for their personal situation in the labor market and the economic situation in general.
Trump has no concrete strategy for restoring economic growth or for defeating CoViD19 (tags)
Trump is faking it on the economy, just as he’s faking it on the pandemic, just as he’s faked everything his whole life
America's Dual Recession (tags)
There is every reason to expect that many of the lost jobs – perhaps as many as 40% – will never come back. In the short to medium term, the tragic paradox is that employment opportunities are both too few and pay too little.
When Wealth Destroys Wealth: Inverse Capitalism and its Limits (tags)
Ever-increasing real estate prices was an illusion. The boom that the US stock markets have experienced in recent years deserves the name fracking boom. Fictitious capital put the US economy back on the growth track.
How to generate unemployment and deflation (tags)
The theory put forward by fair-weather philosophers that the pandemic will be a salutary shock leading to a better, more sustainable world is wrong. Less is not more, but less. Corona is not an opportunity, it is an evil. We can only hope that one day it will pass.
The turn to less: Corona and the consumption dilemma (tags)
The Corona crisis could be the beginning of a better normality. Corona could make a turning point in history. The global North has benefited from unequal trade relations. Global employment has lost its role as the center of life. We must get out of the old path dependencies.
Financial Markets and National Socialism (tags)
Joseph Goebbels was appointed "Reich Minister for National Enlightenment and Propaganda "7 on March 15, 1933.: "The people should begin to think and react in a unified way. [...]" They should stand behind the actions of the government with full sympathy and support.
The economy for faith healers (tags)
Due to the sharpening contradictions of late capitalist socialization, barbarism, not reason, is increasing. Reason is not advancing in the overall historical movement, as once postulated by Hegel. Only the overcoming of this false whole, would offer humankind a chance of survival.
The Job Guarantee in the Corona Pandemic (tags)
If the tax system is not reformed in an equitable manner, this will probably mean 10 to 20 years of cutbacks, starving basic services such as education, health, and care, as was the case in many European countries after the 2008 financial crisis.
The chances of the Corona crisis (tags)
Public debt only became a problem after the bank bailouts...Crises cause fear and reinforce deep-seated anxieties.. The market under capitalism is not an efficient distribution mechanism, but a means to enrich private corporations at the expense of society and its environment.
Our normality is not returniing (tags)
If the government's response to the debt accumulated during the crisis is austerity, it will make the situation even worse. It is therefore right to call for a more active and visionary state policy that shows a way out of the crisis. What form will these policies take?
Wave of layoffs in the US election campaign (tags)
The corona pandemic triggered the most massive job losses in the USA since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Unemployment rose to its highest level in more than 70 years. In April alone, 20.5 million jobs outside agriculture were cut, according to the government
The war metaphor in the Corona crisis (tags)
Instead of a positive elimination of conditions, a social regression could also occur: intensified competition in the fight for market share, "exclusive solidarity" (Klaus Dörre) in the fight for jobs and welfare benefits. Will governments master the crisis?
We cannot repay the Corona debts (tags)
Now there are exactly two ways to revive the economy. The first and best option is to push back the neo-liberal agenda, strengthen the trade unions...If we do not succeed in pushing companies back into the role of debtors, the economy cannot function w/o new state debts.
"It's the economy stupid!" (tags)
US unemployment at the start of April 2020 is higher than at the peak of the 1929 Great Depression. Trump is to blame for the botched response to the Coronavirus that he initially called a hoax. The real hoax is Trump's commitment to America!
"We do not live in capitalism" (tags)
After the transition to Atlantic turbo-capitgalism, little can be recognized from the earlier times of the initiatives of the social market economy. In this situation, the counter-factual and fact-immune creed of all conservatives is enmeshed in a deep unconsciousness about the world.
On the Power of Money: Three by Eugen Drewermann (tags)
Only faith (as in a religion), the "invisible hand," the "law" of the "free" market can judge everything. State interventions can only be annoying. The market itself is allegedly "social". Everyone acts according to his advantage. The system is not social but criminal and unjust.
Economics in the times of the coronavirus (tags)
Most people’s thinking is determined by the development of the Covid-19 crisis, the return of “the hour of executive power” (Gerhard A. Ritter), i.e. state of exception legislation, and the fears which it evokes as well as the economic measures in response to the health crisis.
Alternatives to Maximizing Profit and The Fragility of Power (tags)
We must look for the "signs of the times" that point to the coming of the Kingdom of God or, as John Holloway puts it, the signs "of the presence of the material power of the cry." The world of struggle against the instrumental power that oppresses and exploits often seems invisible.
Don't Panic. Solidarity. Read (tags)
Some experts are sure that the only thing that will stop the virus permanently is for everyone to stay at home for a few weeks. Model China. The drastic quarantine has obviously worked, if you believe the Chinese government, the number of inflected people is decreasing.
The finance-dominated regime of accumulation and the crisis in Europe (tags)
Prof. Demirovic gives us charts on profits, private indebtedness and wages that show profits explode and wages and investments stagnate in 40 years of neoliberalism.
IMF Chief Warns of Financial Disaster Driven by Inequality (tags)
IMF Head Kristalina Georgieva warns of a return of the Great Depression driven by inequality and financial sector instability in a speech delivered at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
Grace Blakeley: The World Must be Saved from Financialization (tags)
The financial markets uncoupled from the real economy - with the help of short-sighted myths, corrupt politicians and the "look away" celebrity media.
The Social State in the Age of Global Capitalism (tags)
Welcome to techno-corporate feudalism-where the richest three Americans have more wealth than 160 million, where the wealthiest 86 have more wealth than 3.6 billion, where the foul-mouthed cancelled free school lunches for 1 million and where market distortions rule.
The Great Ecumene of the Churches against Capitalism (tags)
"This economy kills!" The pope and the great ecumene of 350 churches reject the neoliberal economy of exclusion. Persons are reduced to consumers and then thrown away as trash.
The Bank Of Israel, Gold, And The Third Temple (tags)
BUY GOLD, GLOBAL DEPRESSION COMING!
Karl Polanyi on Unfettered Capitalism (tags)
Karl Polanyi condemned profit greed and deregulated markets. Today's capitalism critics are his heirs and don't know it. An unfettered capitalism is responsible for the world coming out of joint. "Finance capital was put in the driver's seat."
From Enlightenment to Counter-Enlightenment (tags)
Brilliant minds elevated "the market" into a "higher being" of the post-modern age to which we must submit. The primacy of the market replaced the primacy of politics. Dr. Schulmeister is an economic researcher in Vienna whose latest book is "The Road to Prosperity" (2019).
What is a Crisis? A Retrospect on the 2008 Economic and Financial Crisis (tags)
The economic guild interprets crisis through an ideological lens. The financial crisis is redefined as a state debt crisis. Illuminating the systemic causes of crisis or discussing the crisis proclivity of the capitalist system is not possible anymore.
Please Disrupt Capitalism! and The Return of Hope (tags)
The old quotation from Gramsci describes our plight: "The old dies and the new cannot come into the world. It is the time of the monster." The Good News is that the time of no alternatives is over. The Bad News is that the wrong alternatives are discussed.
IMF Says Global Economy Faces a "Delicate Moment" (tags)
As world leaders, finance ministers, business leaders and development groups gather for the Spring International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, the IMF raises fresh concerns about the global economy. The IMF releases the biannual World Economic Outlook Report noting a slowdown in global growth and focusing on economic challenges that include unsustainable debt, trade tensions and the impact of natural disasters on the financial system.
The financial economy uncoupled from the real economy.
Ten Years After the Financial Crash (tags)
US economic statistics are dubious since financial markets are based on financial products and money out of nothing. Tax havens, micro-second betting, stock buybacks and corruption through lobbying are market-distorting and cause revenue shortfalls.
The Populist Makers and Dangerous Optimism (tags)
The people vote and capital decides. Another capitalism appears that is marked by an anti-liberal and intolerant culture. The goal of the new capitalists is the same as the old capitalists: to make the rich even richer. The governing elites gamble away the future of coming generations.
Teacher Strike? Time for Labor Studies (tags)
With the strike looming, it's a good time to prepare for a little alternative, experiential education. Labor Studies!
Driven to Consumption and Money out of Nothng (tags)
Growth originally created a material prosperity about which earlier generations could only dream. However, more economic growth does not lead to people becoming happier. We are prisoners of a system that forces us to permanent growth. Banks create credits.
Finance Capitalism and the Digital Economy (tags)
The financialization of the economy and the rise of the commercial Internet are directly connected... At the beginning of the digital economy, as Marianna Mazzucato and others showed, was an investing state that took over the installment financing for digitalization.
The Dictatorship of Corporations (tags)
Why do the majority of politicians so often make decisions against the public interest and in favor of industry? A new quality of lobbyism arose on account of the dramatically stronger market- and financial power of companies. I sound the alarm. The power relations in our society are shifting endangering democracy andthe market economy,
Against Market Radicalism (tags)
Capitalism is not "the end of history" as the American Francis Fukuyama postulated in 1992. The system question is open! The economy should be re-embedded in society. What seems rational in microeconomics collides with the irrationality of maximum profits as en end-in-itself
Capitalism and Worldwide Inequality (tags)
Thomas Piketty's motto "Inequality is always a problem when it is excessive" introduces the new World Inequality Report. Inequalities of income and wealth swell globally and in individual regions and nations.
Capital as Climate Killer (tags)
The growth pressure of the world economy makes a resource-sparing social order only possible beyond capital. The seeming rationality of capitalist goods production serves an irrational end-in-itself - the multiplication of capital.
Interview with Social Philosopher Friedhelm Hengsbach (tags)
The financial markets have uncoupled from the real economy since the middle of the 1970s. Politicians listen and react to every sound from the financial sector. Who paid for the bank bailout? The general public or the state made itself poor and guaranteed capital.
The Beam in the White House (tags)
Iran is the "greatest supporter of terror," declared president Donald Trump. With that, he justified his peace-endangering cancellation of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Reducing foreign policy to scapegoating is Hitlerian.
Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism - A Symbiotic Pair (tags)
Rightwing populist parties mix the conventional rightwing authoritarian political style with neoliberal economic ideas emphasizing the free unregulated market and the sleek but strong state. For Hayek, unions allegedly threaten democracy and force a just redistribution policy.
Neoliberalism or New Freedom for Corporations (tags)
"The interests of merchants always differ from public interests. As a rule, they are interested in deceiving and misusing the general public" (Adam Smith). Keynes established that the market alone cannot ensure the prosperity of everyone.
Work and Digitalization and A Corpse Governs Society (tags)
On the 2018 Day of Labor, many were worried. No one can deny digitalization affects work. Artificial intelligence greatly changes professions and whole branches. Well-paid jobs become scarcer. Rebuilding the social state seems necessary. Capitalism's blind flight through history is ending.
China's 6.9% Growth: The Superiority of the Plan (tags)
China has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty in only three decades thanks to the opening of the economy. In 1978, 90% of the population lived below the absolute poverty line of $1.90 a day. Today, there are `only' 43 million, three percent of the population of 1.4 billion.
The World Dependent on Central Banks (tags)
The situation seems extremely contradictory. The global economic and financial system has been clinically dead since 2008. It only functions because it is artificially kept alive by the central banks like a patient in the intensive care unit $!8 trillion was pumped into the global system.
Prohibiting Micro-Second Betting on the Exchanges (tags)
The financial sector that has gone off course should serve the real economy again in the future. The exchange functions like a gigantic casino. Throwing some sand int he gears with a transactions tax would slow down the speculation.
Unemployment and New Ways (tags)
The rise of unemployment worldwide has reached unparalleled dimensions. In 1999, 700 million were affected. The neoliberal economic theory promotes the prosperity of the rich, not society as a whole. Profit maximization is often the only goal. Reducing working hours is vital.
Living Together Differently! (tags)
Modern politics must fight against excessiveness and inequality. All progress narratives have worn out. The cake will not become larger. The perspective of conviviality aims at abundance, not at tightening belts..
Adam Smith as Philanthropist (tags)
The market can only fulfill its technical function when its rules and mechanisms are politically fixed and governmentally monitored...Adam Smith's theory has nothing to do with neoliberals and market radicals who preach the sleek state, low taxes for businesses and low wages.
Refused sharing and rediscovery of sharing are signs of this time. "This economy kills." So Pope Francis judges socio-economic conditions. Taxing the rich is vital. With additional revenue, workers would not feel threatened by immigrants
Capitalism Criticism 2.0 (tags)
"Capitalism contains crisis as rain clouds contain rain" (Jean Juares, 19th century socialist). Profits increase in the neoliberal model, not investment (Nicolas Krowall). The competitive pressure drives businessmen to reduce investments in labor and wages.
Survival instead of Profit (tags)
Capital is a powerful machine of commodification. Since the capitalist market economy became autonomous and "separated" from society, capital has only functioned according to its own laws, the impersonal laws of profit and accumulation.
The Welfare State in Crisis (tags)
Since 2008, crisis was the defining political theme. "No one should be fooled about the majority will of the population regarding taming wiled finance capitalism. The system could only be bailed out from collapse with taxpayer guarantees." (Habermas 2010).
Limits to Growth Published Forty Years Ago (tags)
The MIT scholars under Dennis Meadows came to four core conclusions: 1) there are limits to economic growth on finite planet, 2) the economy and population are growing exponentially, 3) exceeding limits will lead to collapse and 4) collapse could be avoided by turning from growth
How the World Heads for the Next Crash (tags)
Governments secure the money of the rich. State debts have grown in nearly all countries of the world since 2010. Ten years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the economy is again in a standstill or mired in crisis. Trump wants to cancel the recent bank regulations and cut corp taxes.
Economic Stagnation and its Mastery (tags)
Corporate profits explode while investments stagnate.Social housing declines with privatization. According to neoliberal theory, higher profits lead to grater investments and more jobs. In truth, higher profits lead to more use of tax havens and companies buying back their stock.
The President as Businessman (tags)
Trump's gigantic tax cuts will only benefit the rich. Revenue losses of six trillion dollars are expected for the first decade after the Trumpian tax cuts start. Trump sells the illusion that the old order can be restored.
Neoliberal Austerity Leads to Deeper Crisis (tags)
A high state share in the economy, developed social states and readiness to intervene actively and anti-cyclically prevent falling into a depression. Trump's demonizing regulation, Medicaid, public schools, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, taxation and democracy must be resisted
Capitalism in the Faith Crisis (tags)
Trust in the "invisible hand" is a religious exercise ensuring a rule over people that is destructive and fatal. Christians and Marxists wage a common struggle against the spirit, logic, and praxis of the false money-god and its servants.
Competition Ideology and Power Reality (tags)
Competition cannot be an end-in-itself. Uncontrolled private power leads to misuse. Uncontrolled competition increasingly destroys itself through concentration and centralization processes. Bastard Keynesianism helps the banks. People diverted from real cause of crises
IMF Warns of "Protectionism" and Risky Investing (tags)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its bi-annual report on the state of the global economy, predicting that global growth will continue steadily but slowly.
Private Enterprise Committed to Social Interests (tags)
Social needs like energy- and water-supply, the waste industry, education, senior pensions and health care can be solved better publically than privately.
Unemployment and Inequality (tags)
"The past will devour the future" if there is no radical change of direction in economic development. That is Thomas Piketty's prediction. Piketty sees the solution in a global capital tax or wealth tax.
The Generations Manifesto (tags)
Neoliberalism turns the world upside down so egoism, avarice, enrichment and ruthlessness become virtues and solidarity, sharing, and the social state become pre-modern threats to the right to absolute free property.
The ABCs of Meaningless Economic Phrases (tags)
The most common myths start from the tax state that burdens the economy, the housework ordered by the state (save,save,save) to the Schwabian housewife prescribing the austerity creed. Politics must tend to every need of capital as a scared doe and therefore lower taxes.
Ethics and the Profit System: Global Change of Values Necessary (tags)
Profit-making is not profit-maximizing. From the magic word profit-mongering is derived the absurd unequal distribution of wealth, cheating of consumers, the exploitation of workers and ultimately the abolition of democracy. An invisible hand makes business profit into common good
Poisoning the Well, or How Economic Theory Damages Moral Imagination (tags)
Markets are human inventions. Today's neoliberal economic dogma creates myths that strengthen the most powerful, most greedy, and most short-term economic actors and undermines the normal longings of people.Structures must change
Democracy and the Social State (tags)
Finance capitalism and Citizens United turn life, language and democracy upside down as the $150 million given by Wall Street to Hillary Clinton fall under the rubric "social engagement." With these theses, Franz Segbers emphasizes the social state as the foundation of democracy.
Neoliberal Crisis Policy has Failed (tags)
The term "invisible hand of the market" goes back to Adam Smith. This assumes all economic activity promotes the common good. Neoliberalism's survival is surprising because its theoretical assumptions are dubious. People cling to neoliberal prescriptions against reality.
Growth Criticism and Reduced Working Hours (tags)
Today's growth critics speak of the necessity of a post-growth society, a "renunciation society" or at least of a "green" capitalist model... A political transformation process is necessary. The economist John Maynard Keynes dreamt of a time when his grandchildren would only have 15hr wk.
The Crises of Today's Economy (tags)
The market is not a subject but an instrument. Nevertheless "the primacy of the market" replaced "the primacy of politics." Neoliberalism actually serves the interests of finance capital. A doctor whose therapy causes sicknesses cannot understand this. Our elites are in great distress.
US Economy: False Diagnoses and False Solutions (tags)
Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's economic plans are too simplistic. Innovations and ideas are lacking. Many people despair. Washington did not always ignore the middle. FDR's New Deal built 165K public buildings.
Generation Y Doesn't Fulfill Expectations (tags)
The revolution from Silicon Valley has shaken traditional American branches to the core.The Smartphone is more desirable than the car since the drive-in movie theater was replaced by Netflix. "The Facebook post may more important for self-esteem than the Italian vacation."
Growing Inequality Harms the Political Economy (tags)
Neoliberalism and finance market capitalism encourage creating money out of thin air, exploding inequality, precarious work and environmental destruction. Wages are not only a cost factor but an important demand factor leading to either investments or social blight.
Holy See Calls on UN Development Summit to Build an Inclusive Economy (tags)
Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called on a United Nations development summit to address debt, tax, trade and environmental policies that impact poverty.
The Totalitarianism of the Market (tags)
Neoliberalism demands reeducation for its implementation like command socialism. The neoliberal view of the person is exemplified by the figure of the Homo Oeconomicus and is the antipole of the socialist person. All persons are entrepreneurs of themseves.
Non-Profits versus Profit Maximization (tags)
Cooperation and competition strengthen each other. Creating a non-profit or cooperative housing sector is the only remedy to gentrification and commodification as rental prices go through the roof. Housing often mutates from a human and social necessity to a speculative asset.
The Language of Neoliberalism (tags)
Knowledge enables people to interpret reality. Metaphors and pictures give things a new meaning and can change reality. Capital isn't so frightened and isn't the same as a deer. The financial crisis is compared to a thunderstorm that is not man-made.
Planned Crises or Alan Greenspan's "Tsunami" (tags)
Greenspan knew his policy would create a financial bubble that ultimately had to burst. The subsequent crisis was consciously accepted since it speeded up the process of creative destruction. Lessons from the 2008 financial meltdown include shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.
The Financial Crisis in the Light of the Social Market Economy (tags)
In 2007 and 2008 the US housing market almost completely collapsed. The crisis was brought about by a combination of state- and market failures. Extensive deregulation and violation of the liability principle were jointly responsible.
How Much State Does the Social Market Economy Need? (tags)
The use of property is only legitimate within the limits of the public interest. Whoever takes a risk must bear it and be liable for the losses. The state has the political task of laying down effective rules for risk assessment, liability and providing transparency. Distributive battles intensify.
Farewell to Homo Oeconomicus (tags)
Capitalism is not running so well. Is this because people are judged wrongly with misguided models? Don't competition and cooperation strengthen each other? Why is the SF-condo model praised to the skies and the Vancouver BC- community center model scorned as unrealistic?
Economic Inequality Divides Economics and Society (tags)
An unequal distribution of income paralyzes the whole economy... Redistribution from top to bottom in a national economy ultimately depends on which social groups can enforce their interests more strongly.
Janet Yellen's Storytime (tags)
The US economy is not picking up speed, wages are not rising and the situation on the labor market has not improved... The world economy did not get going again after the greatest wealth redistribution in the history of humanity.
65 Economists Call for QE for People in the Eurozone (tags)
The campaign for Quantitative Easing for People is currently supported by 21 organizations and aims to redirect money created through the QE program to the real economy by either financing public investment spending in the eurozone or by distributing a citizens' dividend to all residents
The Crisis of Economists (tags)
The mainstream economy doesn't know what an argument is any more. Claims or assertions are made. This neoclassicism is not a science but resembles a religion that proclaims dogmas. The economy is a social science that offers interpretations.
Brave Green World. The Green Economy Myths, 60 pp (tags)
Thirteen Green Economy myths are discussed. In light of the false promises associated with the Green Economy, a socio-ecological transition is necessary (and possible)!
Criticism of Market Theory and Market Ideology (tags)
Market fundamentalists cling to the myths of the self-healing market and corporate beneficence..The real market economy functions very differently than the fantastic notions of the theoretical market economy. Maximum individual profit does not agree with social welfare.
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
In the 1960s the average holding time for stocks was 10 years. Now the holding time is not 9 months but 22 seconds. Like shareholder value, profit maximization leads to exploding inequality and the waste of resources. States are weakened by tax cuts.
Economic Crises as Sicknesses and Catastrophes (tags)
The 2008 financial crisis is often wrongly described as a "state debt crisis" where cause and effect are inverted and economists and the market are released from responsibility. Sickness and catastrophe metaphors dominate discussion
Capitalism is the Problem (tags)
Prosperity in large part is based on the ecological and social exploitation of poor countries in Africa and Asia. Today 20% of humanity consume 80% of global resources. The poor are played off against each other while the richest hide billions in tax havens.
Philippines: Unions decry deceptive, vague ‘labor agenda’ of APEC (tags)
ORGANIZED workers sneered at the so-called labor agenda in the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila next month by describing it as deceptive and vague, which merely reaffirms APEC’s ideology based on the primacy of corporate power and profits over labor and trade union rights.
Canada had its best election ever! (tags)
Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party with 184 seats became the Majority Party in O Canada two weeks ago. "When government trusts citizens, citizens trust the government," Trudeau said. With higher taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investment, Canada will become more inclusive.
Progress Means Reduced Working Hours (tags)
Shorter hours can lead to economic growth, higher productivity, greater output, more time sovereignty and better long-term health of workers. Closing one's eyes to these arguments and only thinking of short-term profit is hostile to the future and not only hostile to the economy.
Obama Approved Israeli West Bank Violence (tags)
Israel
Jeremy Corbyn's Economic Vision (tags)
Corbyn
With slogans like "Less State, More Private," the state was run down for years. Neoliberal ideology managed to present it as a bureaucratic monster. Banks were bailed out. In the emergency, the most wicked neoliberal becomes the state fan. The history of innovations shows the state takes risks
Gerald Celente's Occupy Peace Initiative (tags)
anti-war
"The Great Transformation Has Begun" (tags)
The core of this system, its over-arching law, is the endless accumulation of capital. That is its main goal to which everything else is subordinated. Persons and nature are used to make more money out of money. Therefore we are degraded to little wheels in this machine.
Farewell to Homo Oeconomicus (tags)
The model of homo oeconomicus is antiquated and over-simplified. Dominant economic models are not based on a realistic picture of humans... The model does not know different human human motives that could be differently activated depending on the context.
Differing Views on China (tags)
China
Crisis, Debt and the Development Perspective, 123 pp (tags)
700 free movies, 700 free E-books and 450 free audio books are ours at www.openculture.com. Enjoy the feast - in the land of disconnect and reversible cups!
From the Free Economy to the Share Economy (tags)
n 1970 the economics Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman argued the social responsibility of business was only maximization of its profits. This is not true any more today. The responsibility of businesses goes beyond profit maximization. More can be demanded of those with power/
Deepening Greek Depression (tags)
Greece
www.openculture.com gives us 700 free movies, 700 free E-books and 450 free audio books. The information economy is an economy of abundance that challenges the past economy of scarcity.
IMF: Greek Debt Untenable (tags)
Greece
Tsipras Surrenders to Troika Bandits (tags)
Greece
Greek Bailouts for Creditors, not Economic Recovery (tags)
Greece
BDS Effect on Israel's Economy (tags)
Israel
The Lie of the Weak State (tags)
The good condition of German labor markets is in reality in a catastrophic state...Unemployment is an "act of violence" against every unemployed person and represents an enormous waste for society as a whole.
"Crisis children" can't find a job despite study, four foreign languages and four hundred applications. They earn one-thousandth what a top manager rakes in. Youth unemployment has reached unbearable levels in Greece and Spain.
On the End of Capitalism (tags)
The bridge from capitalism to the new "post-growth economy" is lacking. Hardly anyone reflects about the process of transformation...If the climate should be spared, flying cannot be a human right. The R-word will be unavoidable again: renunciation.
Overdue farewell to dogma (tags)
Mainstream economics did not see the crisis coming – and so far it has not done much to overcome it. However, at least in the USA, a rethink has started.
Growth, Prosperity and Quality of Life (tags)
"Our understanding of a modern economic and social system is strongly influenced by the phase between 1950 and 1975 when the social market economy was created and democracy was re-stabilized. Since then conditions have changed. New answers are necessary."
Growth Criticism and Social-Ecological Transformation (tags)
Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Words can be like spears breaking frozen souls. (Kafka) Education is the great transformer (John Kenneth Galbraith). Economics as taught today is like brainwashing. (Ulrich Thielemann) Incentives to investing in the real economy are vital after the phase of credit- and bubble prosperity.
Profit-Making is Different Than Profit-Maximizing (tags)
Discussions of jobs and the economy are often marked by trivialization, distortion, unreality and wishful thinking, The neoliberal model promotes profits, not investments and rationalization and digitalization lead to mass unemployment. System analysis and market failure are often glossed over
Obama Is Leading the Way Toward Economic Catastrophe (tags)
"...important trading partners—Japan, China, others in Asia—are employing a nasty trade strategy from the early thirties known as “beggar thy neighbor.” They are weakening the value of their own currencies (and boosting the dollar’s value) so their exports will be cheaper than competing American products..."
Monsanto's Land Grab in Ukraine (tags)
Ukraine
On Getting Rid of Standardized Testing (tags)
A comment on a blog post about eliminating standardized testing.
Treasury Dynamic Scoring Anal Refutes Claims of Supporters of the Tax Cuts (tags)
The study casts doubt on claims that the tax cuts are responsible for much of the recent growth in investment and jobs. It finds that making the tax cuts permanent would lead initially to lower levels of investment, and would result over the longer term in lower levels of employment (i.e., in fewer jobs).
This introduction to Tomasz Konicz' "On the Search for Alternatives to the Permanent Capitalist Crisis" (2014) is translated from the German. Empire could be replaced by republic as excess could be replaced by access and more by enough Capitalist contradictions/dislocations are signs.
Putin's Annual Marathon Press Conference Tour De Force (tags)
Putin
Economics is Onesided and Reactionary (tags)
The homo oeconomicus cannot be our hope and is not desirable or future-friendly. The economic benefits to the capitalist entrepreneur are in contradiction to nature and to the person..We face completely oversized financial markets that have uncoupled from the real economy creating value.
For a Different Economics (tags)
Economists are criticized everywhere for their onesidedness, their focus on markets and their inability to deal with the burning problems... From neoclassical assumptions "more is better" or markets lead to efficient distribution, a perspective on the world results that sets efficiency over justice
Victory of the Economy over Democracy and the Constitutional State (tags)
The person exists as an end-in-him/herself and not merely as a means... On the other hand, the principle of the worldwide market economy is based on treating persons and their needs as means to the end of profit realization.
Capitalism and Its Crisis Proclivity (tags)
The liberal economists of the 19th century claimed no crises could occur in capitalism since every supply creates its demand. On the other hand, Marx and Engels recognized early on the causes for crises in capitalism. The contradictions of the accumulation process lead to crises.
The empirical-historical analysis of the top incomes and their wealth are in the center with Thomas Piketty's "Capital" (2014). The share of the top 10% was never below 60% from 1917 to 2012. A wealth tax is vital to reverse the exploding inequality.
"Too Smart to Fail" by Thomas Frank (tags)
The “sound” banker, alas! is not one who sees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows so that no one can really blame him. –John Maynard Keynes
Fed
The Myth of the Unexpected Crisis and Security (tags)
Many knew the rise of housing prices had to end some time or other... Four theses explain why the Fed was not active during the real estate boom: power of lobbyists, market ideology, trust in abstract academic models and inflation targeting.
TheInheritance of Inequality and Rethinking Growth (tags)
The economy exists for people, not vice versa. Economics should be pluralist, not a monolith. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. Thomas Piketty and alternative economics emphasize inequality and mass unemployment.
Crowning the Dragon: World's Top Economy (tags)
China
IMF Annual Meetings Focus on Inclusiveness and Global Job Growth (tags)
"The risks the IMF raises are real. We need to address inequality if we are going to grow the global economy," said Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious anti-poverty organization, Jubilee USA.
class war
Strengthening Sino-Russian Ties (tags)
business and finance
New Economy and New Prosperity (tags)
Economic structures that form the basis for social prosperity have become dysfunctional. The financial markets have expanded their original function and are now self-financed markets in which protection from risks has become a highly speculative business.
Karl Polanyi - Still Actual 50 Years After His Death (tags)
Karl Polanyi was the author of "The Great Transformation." As in Polanyi's times, the absurdity of the market utopia must be made clear and confronted with social reality. Freedom and democracy are goals to defend, not markets.
How Neoliberalism Gained Hegemony (tags)
The pressing question is why do the masses vote against their own interests and applaud those who champion goals opposed to their well-being or welfare? Ideas prevail because power is on their side, not because they are better. Neoliberalism went from sect to cultural hegemony
The BRICS: Challengers to the Global Status Quo (tags)
Can the BRICS wrest control of the global economy from the United States and Europe, or will their internal contradictions tear them apart?
The wealth of others has become more a problem and less an incentive. Capital is blind, Thomas Piketty says. Capital grows faster than the economy. Differences in wealth are inherent in capitalism but do not represent a natural law. A society can accept them or act against them.
Despite growth in the Philippines, labor underscores systemic failure in rising inequality (tags)
Exclusive growth for exclusive group of wealthiest businessmen.
Self-Determination Means Market Determination (tags)
We face the continuing dissolution of traditional types, forms and rules, not a new type, a new form or a new rule... What was once called estrangement or objectification should appear as workers' own interest. .. Karl Polanyi spoke of a dis-embedded economy.
A term becomes a myth; the myth becomes a religion. We are all conditioned by the misguided use of terms and connections so a way of looking at things seems absurd. The German economy acts like a bulldozer rather than a locomotive.
Mainstream Economics: Monocultures at the University (tags)
The "Plural Economics Network" challenges breaking through the monoculture and intellectual one-sidedness in economics...Instead of viewing our varied social problems from different perspectives, all the answers are derived from very similar models.
After HUge Tax Cuts for the Rich, Kansas's Economy is Foundering (tags)
Things are also getting worse for the neediest people in the state. Brownback’s official response to the state’s poverty problem was a brief report that advocated fighting poverty by encouraging traditional family structures through eight-hour “pre-marital education” classes for couples
Free Internet Book: All on Board: Making Inclusive Growth Happen, 202pp (tags)
An inclusive, democratic society is a vision of a future of generalized security, community centers, free Internet books, exchanging roles, qualitative growth and soft power. Unlike a chair, an idea can be shared by a whole people. Without a vision, people become bones for Coca Cola.
Video: Why Capitalism is Killing the Planet, 27 min (tags)
Market anarchy as promoted by Adam Smith is different than prioritzing human needs. We must put the brakes on industrial growth. Equivalent jobs must be provided for closed industries.
The new indebtedness is a consequence of the crisis caused by the financial industry-and in no way owed to an excessive social state, demographic change and so forth.. There are many critics of this policy of mastering crisis by flooding the financial markets with fresh money.
Time to act with urgency and determination to improve the lives of Filipino workers (tags)
Philippines: As the country observes the International Labor Day, Akbayan Party would like to draw attention to the inability of the current economic growth to translate into an improvement in the lives of ordinary workers from both the urban centers and the countryside. While the Aquino administration takes pride on the 7.2 % growth rate for 2013, it cannot mask the fact that this growth has been insufficient to curb massive unemployment and poverty.
Neoliberalism has brought us back to Rockefeller's best times. Bill Gates is 1.4 million times as rich as the average American. A "feudal lifestyle" is made out to be worthwhile and in no way negatively described. Thus "re-feudalization" is dulled as a polemical term.
Ukrainians Denied Democracy (tags)
Ukraine
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
“The state is consciously weakened to speed up the redistribution from bottom to top because that corresponds to the dogmas of the neoliberal ideology.” Our state was systematically weakened in the last 15 years by extensive tax cuts. I remember the lowering of the top income tax rate.
Liberating the Economy from Prejudices (tags)
Economics is not an immutable unchangeable fate but a human system where changing rules changes outcomes. James Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz are two well-known economists who question the myths of conventional economics, the self-healing, efficient and deregulated market
On the Death of John Kenneth Galbraith (tags)
The great economist John Kenneth Galbrath was shocked at the public squalor alongside private affluence. He devised the horse-sparrow theory, horses must be fed so the sparrows can live. A healthy economy means shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.
Structural Weaknesses of Capitalism (tags)
Ignorance and ideology replaced facts and economic fairness under Reagan. Reagan appealed to the Laffer curve and argued tax cuts bring higher revenues, He confused investment and speculation, SROs and SUVs, militarism and security and decried government as the problem.
In the Whirlpool of Deregulation (tags)
The economy changed from real- to finance capitalism since the 1970s. This was not an accidental development. The economic researcher Stephan Schulmeister sees a pattern where deregulation created problems that were fought with more deregulation.
The Free Trade Agreement TTIP - New Version of the "Golden Age" (tags)
Lobbyists and think tanks of transnational corporations dreamt of a global market without limits. With enticing slogans like more economic growth or creation of new jobs, the population should accept the trade-and investment agreement.
Modesty as an Economic Model (tags)
"This completely deregulated sphere (derivatives) ultimately grew to greater dimensions than the real economy. That was undoubtedly absolute madness..A smaller financial sector need not be unconditionally bad.. The economy is a faith like every other..."
The Tiger and His Trainers (tags)
How preposterous to think we can avert the next crisis without regulating or shriveling the financial sector, addressing income inequality and radically rethinking the meaning and assumptions of economics? Hans-Jurgen Urban likens the financial crisis to a tiger breaking from his cage and sees the welfare state and unions as trainers
Video: Republican Theme Song - Nothing Really Matters and The Fear Economy (tags)
Thanks to House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican caucus, the "Do-Nothing Congress" was so awful this year that I decided it deserved its own theme song. I had fun putting together this video—which also calls out some uplifting wins MoveOn members and other progressives were able to achieve this year
The Resilience of Neoliberalism (tags)
Vivien A. Schmidt and Mark Thatcher propose five lines of analysis to explain its resilience: the flexibility of neoliberalism’s core principles; the gaps between neoliberal rhetoric and reality; the strength of neoliberal discourse in debates; the power of interests and the force of institutions...
Book Review: "The Victory of Capital" (tags)
A society can only provide for the future by investing today in the production of tomorrow...What may be sensible economically for a private individual or individual business could be harmful for the national economy, particularly when the economy staggers.
EU Fines Financial Institutions $2.3bn Over Manipulation of LIBOR, One of Largest Banking (tags)
The EU recently handed down billions of Euros in fines for eight large financial institutions because of their role in rigging benchmark banking interest rates.
Fact Check on Venezuela's Economy (tags)
Venezuela
The Super Rich Reinvent U.S. Capitalism (tags)
As U.S. corporate profits soar to record highs, food stamps for the neediest were quietly cut. The politicians who are demanding endless cuts to social programs — Democrats and Republicans alike — insist that the U.S. is broke, all the while conveniently ignoring the mountains of tax-free wealth piling up in the pockets of the super rich.
Studying Economics Today is Like Brainwashing (tags)
The blind trust in efficient markets must be replaced and bankers given a new understanding. Profit making is different than profit maximization. Banks should be a public function, not a casino and the real economy and the environment not abandoned.
A War on the Poor by Paul Krugman (tags)
The state has a social nature and cannot only be a power and security state. Since the 1980s, the banks carried out a "quiet coup" (Simon Johnson) by spending over $4 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying over ten years.
Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? (tags)
Zygmunt Bauman, born in 1925, is a Polish sociologist. Since 1971, he has resided in England after being driven out of Poland by an anti-semitic campaign, engineered by the Communist government he had supported.
Israel
America's Economic Dark Side (tags)
class war
Suffocating Palestine Toward Extinction (tags)
Palestine
Heiner Flassbeck on the US Budget Conflict (tags)
The current ceiling of $16.7 trillion will be reached on October 17. If the political camps cannot agree on a new upper limit, the largest economy of the world will be insolvent – with possibly disastrous consequences for the world economy. This October 2013 interview is translated from German
Yellen's Fed Assures Business As Usual (tags)
Fed
The United States of Inequality (tags)
class war
Criticism of Market Theory and Market Ideology (tags)
Market fundamentalists cling to the myths of the self-healing market and corporate beneficence..The real market economy functions very differently than the fantastic notions of the theoretical market economy. Maximum individual profit does not agree with social welfare.
Video: Bill Moyers - Joblessness is Killing Us (tags)
Moved by the plight of the poor and unemployed, Pope Francis recently decried a global economy that “does us so much harm.” In this essay, Bill Moyers reflects on our broken economy.
Capitalism is not the Opposite of the State (tags)
Without the permanent intervention of the state, there would be no functioning capitalism. No economic branch depends on the state like the financial branch The deregulation was based on the trick of slandering state regulation as strait-jackets.that could strangle the economy.
G20 Focuses on Debt, Taxes, Corruption, Syria and IMF Quotas (tags)
G20 Focuses on Debt, Taxes, Corruption, Syria and IMF Quotas
Politics Serving Free Financial Markets Creates False Incentives (tags)
Stable exchange rates, a strict regulation of (financial-) capital transactions, a transactions tax and low interest rates should make financial speculation so unattractive (“euthanasia of the profiteer”) that real investments would quickly expand to maintain full employment.
Ten Theses on the Crisis and its Solution (tags)
Problems don't disappear when they are ignored. Deregulation is a collective and political crisis. Language and democracy are endangered when arsonists are called firefighters, when private losses become public losses and crime in the suits is normalized as a business model.
Alternatives to Stagnation and Depression (tags)
Politics has fought the symptoms of the great crisis with banking- and economic packages while its systemic causes remain untouched… The hardest phase of the great crisis is ahead of us, not behind us. All sectors try to safeguard their position through spending cuts...
Hardwired Inequality in America (tags)
class war
VIDEO: Durviving the New American Economy, 56min (tags)
Bill Moyers interviewed two Milwaukee families struggling against a downhill economy in a changing city. Deindustrialization isn't a law of nature like falling rain but a political decision. After deindustrialization, state jobs were a way to middle class life.
Labor Solidarity in Neoliberal Structural Change (tags)
The self-regulating market and the invisible hand were neoliberal theories of Frederick August von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Submission to the market was described as a natural law, as natural and self-evident as the rotation of the planets. Solidarity and unions were decried as barriers.
How Does Justice Come to the Economy? (tags)
VIDEO: Austerity - The History of a Dangerous Idea (tags)
Mark Blyth is Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Political Science at Brown University and a Faculty Fellow at Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies
North Korean economy surrenders to foreign currency invasion (tags)
Chinese currency and U.S. dollars are being used more widely than ever in North Korea instead of the country's own money, a stark illustration of the extent to which the leadership under Kim Jong-un has lost control over the economy.
Quantitative Crisis: Bernanke’s “Stimulus” For The 1% (tags)
When I heard that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last week that it was too soon for the Fed to end its extraordinary stimulus programs, I did a double take.
VIDEO: Bill Moyers' "Going to Jail for Protesting" (tags)
“Lobbyists have spent years making sure these loopholes are put into the tax code.” -@NYTimes' Gretchen Morgenson http://ow.ly/lnEI1 “Corporations have a role to play in our economy, but don't have a role to play in our government.” -@dechristopher http://ow.ly/lnEz2
Economic Ethics After the Crisis (tags)
Peter Ulrich is an emeritus professor of Economic Ethics at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and author of Integrative Economic Ethics (2008). The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. The invisible hand is a myth to be unmasked.
The exodus from the casino capitalism producing ever faster and ever deeper crises cannot succeed without a broad and powerful democratic base. Parliamentary democracy is urged to finally take up the struggle around the primacy of politics
The State Should Rescue the Market Economy (tags)
A balance recession is more than a temporary slump of the economy. During a balance recession, private economic actors try to reduce their debts. The cheap money seeps out on the financial markets where it leads to new bubbles. The labor market does not function like other markets. Falling wages did not lead to more employment - as claimed for decades.
Local Fights Against Austerity Are Growing Across the U.S. (tags)
Between sequestration, with its damaging impact on workers and the entire economy, and the billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other necessary social programs that President Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people. You cannot lift up a nation’s economy while slashing away at its consumers’ pocketbooks. In order to justify their defiance of this elementary law, both Republicans and Democrats start talking the language of “austerity,” that is the notion that economic policy must be guided by reducing budgetary deficits first and foremost, and that workers exclusively must be made to pay the cost.
People still believe in the “faster, higher and bigger.” This fiction is maintained through over-chemicalization, over-technization, genetic manipulation or simply bribery of the judges. People lie to themselves.
Budget Cuts and Happy Times (tags)
For around three decades, a Troika from Wall Street, the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve pushed global (capital) investments with a mixture of tax cuts, cheap credits and overrated securities.
The BRIC - States: World Economy on a Silk Thread (tags)
In 2013 for the first time since the beginning of European industrialization, the production volumes of the threshold- and developing countries will surpass the volumes of the triad. Sinking real investments is true for all `developed' countries.
Cyprus
When Theory and Reality Diverge (tags)
Politics forces crises and prevents their ending every day by holding to its ideological blinders. The state is not a private household and spending cuts always strike back on other actors of the economy. When theory and reality diverge, the theory is wrong, not the reality.
Austerity When Stimulus Is Needed (tags)
class war
"We need a new economic balance" (tags)
If the US removed the cap on social security taxes, public spirit and generational fairness would return to the states. At present, there is a cap at $106K. If you make $4 million, you only pay social security tax on the first $106K.
The Great Tax-Cut Experiment and Corporate Taxes as % of Profits (tags)
Comparisons with Other Countries: Americans pay a smaller proportion of total income in taxes than do people in any other advanced capitalist economy. as in Western European countries.
Spectacle of Irrationality (tags)
The bailout umbrella may establish a modern kind of feudal rule. The abdication of politics is one of the worst consequences of the financial crisis. Many politicians believe the market-radical nonsense that tax cuts finance themselves.
class war
US Economy: Troubled or All's Well? (tags)
economy
Vulgar Materialism: The Madness of Growth and the Casino (tags)
Renouncing on growth or tolerating a shriveling economy is hard. Greece is a shocking example. Many people cut down the last trees because they could not afford heating oil. Nature is the first victim in an economic crisis. Whole generations are traumatized.
The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble (tags)
The fiscal cliff is a bipartisan excuse to introduce austerity measures in the form of "needed" cuts to social safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The stage is set for "Jason vs. Freddy" or Obama vs. Boehner as we the people wait to see which politician serial killer will be cutting the U.S. people with their sharp knives of austerity.
More Evidence of Chupacabra than Bipartisan Fiscal Cliff Hype (tags)
The bipartisan hype over the so-called "fiscal cliff" is an attempt my the status quo to institute severe austerity measures that would effect seniors, disabled and other people dependent upon the social safety net that is set up on the chopping block by BOTH Democrats and Republicans. There may be more evidence of the mythical chupacabra (goat sucker) than there is proof of any upcoming fiscal cliff. Either way we are dealing with some really mangy bloodsuckers!
How about Quantitative Easing for the People? (tags)
Giving the general population x-amount of money would certainly give the economy the boost that it needs instead of going to the bankers. More importantly, however, is for people to have faith in the economy again and that their future is secure.
From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: An Interview with Thomas Palley (tags)
"The way economies are organized and function is significantly the product of social choices, not the product of nature. Over the past thirty years we (society) have embraced a set of economic ideas..."
What modern Americans consider a dream the ancient Greeks would consider a nightmare.
Austerity — the 1%’s Global Battle Cry (tags)
Whether we are left with the Fiscal Cliff or a Grand Bargain, workers in the U.S. face massive cuts to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Food Stamp assistance and other needed social safety nets. This is an example of “austerity” which has largely been pursued in the U.S. until now, on a statewide and local level.
To Krugman, the increasing ideological blindness of German politicians can only be explained by their belief that "hard times must be the necessary punishment for earlier excesses." Krugman overlooks that the hard times and excesses do not concern the same people.
Barack Obama must stimulate the economy with state spending. The astonishing example of Europe could convince republicans who in the past blocked everything... The monetary policy of a central bank cannot replace fiscal policy,
Economists Argue over Distribution Question (tags)
More and more economists take distribution questions seriously. When inequality becomes too great in a national economy, the economy becomes unstable. Private indebtedness and income inequality massively increased in the US Financial markets uncoupled from real economy
Not so fast: The contradictions in China’s capitalist rise (tags)
Let’s not hold our breaths just yet — China is not nearly capable today of becoming the new capitalist center. Its military and economy are much too small.
Free Internet Book: "The World Crisis" (tags)
Once the source of hope, the US is often a source of fear. Closing most of the 700+ bases would be a step from empire to republic. Security is a political and social challenge, not only a military project. Development should be a right, not only a hope and a promise..
Against Growth Mania and Fair Redistribution (tags)
How can we rebuild our society so we manage with less growth and not collapse when growth does not occur? Consumption beyond a certain level is pathological, a compensation or substitute for missed life (cf. Erich Fromm).
The Marcos’ Legacy of Fraudulent and Illegitimate Debts (tags)
AS THE NATION remembers today the declaration of Martial Law and the imposition of the Marcos fascist dictatorship 40 years ago — we recall not only the crimes and abuses, but the valiant struggles of our people to end the tyrannical regime.
Debt Forgiveness Or Death! (tags)
These are the only two choices for the global elite as history does not lie.
class war
Financing the Government: Romney Must Get the Message (tags)
The role of the state and the necessity of common action is a main theme in the political debate. Regulation ensures the same rules for everyone in competition. Conservative politicians in the US underrate the importance of publically provided education, technology and infrastructure.
Neoliberalism was the Godfather of the Financial Industry (tags)
Keynesianism was replaced by neoliberalism that guided the fallow investment capital into speculation.The development of social systems and the rise of real wages contributed to social peace and stabilizing the economic upswing by strengthening mass consumption.
On the Solutions of Liberal Economists (tags)
The crisis has shaken economics to its foundations. The neoliberal mainstream has lost its support; economists alternate between self-doubt and arrogance. Once they believed in the rationality of economic actors and markets and the notion that financial management exists to serve the real economy.
"The barbaric core of capitalist socialization is on full display in the present system crisis. The propagandists of totalitarian economism come in the mask of democrats. Economic-profitability thinking is imposed on society. Our society has long been viewed as a business."
class war
Video: "What's the Economy for Anyway?" (2009) (tags)
David Batke from Earth Economics offers a systems approach and describes economics in relation to health and nature. Economies don't grow but are transformed. Our economic measurements focus on stuff.
For a European Anti-Crisis Front (tags)
Lowering the public debt burden is not an end-in-itself. Debts could serve to stimulate the economy and improve the living conditions of the victims of the crisis. Debt reduction must occur mainly by increasing the tax revenues (higher tax rates and combating tax evasion), not only by cuts.
Who is Responsible for the Crisis of Capitalism? (tags)
Capitalism has long sedimented into a natural state of humanity about which there is no more reflection than about gravity. The crisis broke out because all the actors brilliantly fulfilled their economic functions in the market economy.
Rio+20: Asian Movements’ Statement on the Green Economy (tags)
We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies. Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!
"A seeming consensus among economists can virtually force the shaping of political opinions.. For 30 years, neoliberalism marginalized all other schools, above all Keynesianism - and all of us hit a brick wall.."
In the Towrope of the Financial Markets (tags)
"High growth has a well-known hook. Surpluses are only possible when natural resources from clear water to rare earth are available, when the energy supply is guaranteed and when the pollutant sinks are sufficient.. The debtors are now those states that had to become indebted.."
Will Johnson: Occupy Activist Says Movement's Alive & Well (tags)
According to Occupy San Diego activist Will Johnson, the movement is alive and well. It may no longer be running law-defying occupations in prominent public places, but it's still working out ways to challenge the vast and increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income in the U.S.
Debt Tribunal and Green Socialism (tags)
Qualitative growth, breaking out of the box of quantitative growth, is the key to solving mass unemployment, environmental destruction and trade imbalance. A job in education costs 1/10 what a job in a chemical dye plant costs. The media is part of a system that refuses change.
The Loss of Respect of the Economic Elite is Enormous (tags)
The embedding of the market and the economy in the civil society is the challenge of the 21st century. Tax shelters or havens must be closed. The wealthiest 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million people. Time for Plan B, alternative economics and reduced working hours!
Economist criticizes "pathological allegience" to economic models (tags)
The crisis was born when Maggie Thatcher and then Bill Clinton deregulated the financial markets. The explosive force that was detonated was incalculable. Economics gave support because it provides models.
The Banks Should Serve the Real Economy (tags)
Democracy, risk and liability are turned upside down when trillions bailout the banks and workers, unemployed and pensioners must pay the bill! We live from those who say No to trivialization of crisis, to the state being reduced to a trough or errand boy for the banks (Bill Moyers). The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity.
Democracy, risk and liability are turned upside down when trillions bailout the banks and workers, pensioners and unemployed must pay the bill. We live from those who say No to corruption, to the state reduced to a trough or errand boy for the banks (Bill Moyers).
Cooperatives and the Good Life (tags)
The rights of businesses in exploiting resources end in the rights of nature according to the constitution of the bien vivir. This understanding of the person-nature relation surpasses the rationalist model of rule over nature realized in capitalism's globalized praxis. Art 395 of Ecuador's constitution affirms sustainability.
class war
The market is a god that has failed (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The economy should serve humankind; humanity should notg serve the economy. Once 90% of investment was productive; now 90% of investment is speculative.
Can We All Agree Occupy Was A Tactic? (tags)
Occupy was a public relations tactic in the purest sense
Readying the Greek Corpse for Burial (tags)
class war
Video: On the Brink: Fiscal Austerity Threatens a Global Recession (tags)
Dr. Heiner Flassbeck, Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD: European austerity policies past the point of no return, driving global economy towards deep and lengthy recession
The Autism of Economists (tags)
Analogous to a mechanical system, neoclassicists understood the economy as a perpetual cycle of production and consumption kept in balance by the price mechanism.
The Error is in the System (tags)
The financial crisis mutated into a global economic crisis and a state debt crisis. The financial crisis was not a "bump in the road" or an industrial accident but a systemic and structural crisis that caused $11 trillion of wealth to vanish while millions lost their jobs. homes and pension
Organized Non-violent Civil Disobedience vs. OWS (tags)
I'm all for organized non-violent civil disobedience but that is not what Occupy Wall St. has been doing.
Economics' sharpest critics regard it as an auxiliary science of astrology, a sect that sings its same little song. Classical authors like John Kenneth Galbraith are finally rediscovered. Exactness is impossible. The coming generation should be protected from mono-cultural ideology
When The Shop Keepers Join The Revolt! (tags)
When the shop keepers join the revolt things must be very bad indeed.
The Invisible Hand Doesn't Help Any More (tags)
Neoclassicism starts from the assumpti8ons that people always act rationally and market processes always lead to optimal results on account of the price mechanism. The market fails. Its view of the person as Homo oeconomicus must be replaced by the Homo cooperativus.
The Rule of Supply-Side Economists (tags)
Supply-side economists dominate wherever one looks in politics, economics and the media. That wages and salaries are not onl.y costs but also demand usually doesn't interest supply-side economists.
Wall Street Excess and Main Street Distress: the Apple Connection (tags)
Apple’s march to market supremacy has been accomplished at tremendous cost to both American and Chinese workers
Dominant Economy Pretends Its Breakdown Was Unforeseeable (tags)
The consensus of the past two decades on how the macro-economy functions is shattered. The breakdown of the dominant economy is a consequence of the financial crisis, the "great shock."
The core of all western-individualist ideas of justice is the principle of personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for the consequences of his/her actions. This motivates as well as disciplines. "We punish the virtuous and reward the squanderers."
Revolting, Occupying and Refusing (tags)
The demand for the commons goes far beyond de-privatization and aims at a social infrastructure of goods and services that everyone needs and to which everyone is entitled. The real economy that must be preserved hardly exists.
So much crisis was never analyzed with a crisis-conditioned satisfaction guarantee! Instead of seeking culprits, we must seek the systemic causes of the indebtedness dynamic. These gigantic debt mountains were necessary to keep capitalism functioning. Fewer and fewer workers can producer more and more goods in an ever-shorter time.
Justice Before Efficiency (tags)
The market economy must be bound to the principles of a fully-developed civil society. More is involved than a belated redistribution. A citizen is basically a social being. To overcome feudalism, precedence must be given to human- and civil rights over the power based on property.
Ongoing Global Economic Crisis (tags)
class war
Obama's Transfer Of The Public's Equity To The 1% (tags)
So they steal your house and will now rent it back to you at outrageous artificially inflated rent while still taking 50% of your deflated income to earn a profit margin off what used to be your equity.
Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater discuss the nature of utopia, economics, how growth and work become fetishes, how what is rational in micro-economics can become irrational in macro-economics, time prosperity and how Marx recognized the contradictions in capitalism.
Occupy War - Stay After the Rose Parade to Hear Cindy Sheehan Speak (tags)
Looking forward to Monday's occupy event at the Rose Parade, focusing on Cindy Sheehan's speech. Argues the wars should be a top priority of the Occupy movement. Provides information about participating in the Occupy LA contingent for the parade.
Why America's 99% have rebelled (tags)
They sign their messages, ‘I am the 99%’. Tthe message of the site is immediately clear: while our society’s richest one per cent enjoys a hugely disproportionate share of wealth and income, the economy has left the vast majority of us behind.
The civilization made and guided by men seriously threatens survival on the earth. The song of Christmas is not a sweet lullaby but a feminine rebellion against the world of death worshipers. The gifts of this earth do not belong to us.
Beyond the Homo Economicus (tags)
The Homo economicus is a kind of calculating machine on two legs that incessantly calculates personal benefits and profit. His conduct follows the model of rational expectations. Incursions of the state will make possible more social equality.
The Crisis, Trust and Homeowners (tags)
Capitalism cannot function any more without credit-financed debt on account of its increasing productivity. The recession will come because the indebtedness-dynamic can hardly be maintained with which the capitalist zombie-economy is kept alive in its pseudo-life.
Economics could be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing self-determination and creativity. Economics changes with the times. Once saving was the elixir and then spending was the elixir. Frank Rotering in "Needs and Limits" discusses "ecological overshoot."
Commons - Taking Charge of Things (tags)
The capitalist market economy develops more and more into a crisis economy. Capitalism is not a totality. Everything we need has never been transacted over the market, for example the whole informal economy in developing countries and the unpaid work in families.
Neoliberalism as Greatest Error in the History of Economic Thought (tags)
Efficiency and prosperity can only be realized on capitalist markets when the economic system is bound in a social order under the primacy of politics. Democratic legitimated politics and the provision of public goods is derived from the "anatomy of market failure."
Beyond Possessive Individualism (tags)
Shrinking the financial sector and abandoning neoliberal myths are vital to prevent the next crisis. The authors, German Young Socialists in their 30s, decry the myths that incomes are just, self-interest leads to public interest and economics and politics are separate.
Debts? Whose Debts? and Keith Olbermann (tags)
Truth is inwardness and must well up in everyone. Life is full of supernova explosions, a universe of possibilities where stars remain invisible until they find their partner star. "We keep the madness going that we call the economy when we do nothing against business as usual."
Deepening Debt Contagion (tags)
economy
Alternative Currency: Let The Era Of Global Prosperity Commence (tags)
Designed on the principle of 'Free Currencies – Free Markets – Free People – Free Planet', on 13 November 2011, the long-awaited Crom Alternative Currency System has finally been opened – in many ways a unique combination of a social network and payment system.
Book Review: "The Great Crash or the Century Crisis" by Elmar Altvater (tags)
Capitalism is at an end and the whole world is drawn into the mess. Preventing this is an ethical imperative and a political duty. The multiple crisis has dragged on for years. The political class allows this to happen. Political answers to the debacle can only be found with clarity on causes.
A Warning To The Economic And Political Elites: Listen Now (tags)
.... this is the beginning of an American revolt. Before considering occupation, we tried other avenues: elections, lobbying, petitioning, email campaigns, telephone campaigns, marches, rallies -- but they were ineffective..... We know that decades of the expansion of corporate power will not be undone with one occupation. Plans are being made by some of us to move "Beyond Occupation" to the next steps of building a movement that represents all Americans.....
Global Economic Crisis Deepens (tags)
economy
economy
Six Proposals for Helping the 99% (tags)
Solidarity, social justice and sharing open doors while tax cuts for the super-rich only lead to exploding inequality. double standards and cynicism. Access could replace excess. The empire could be superseded by the republic.
Common Welfare Economy: An economic model for the future (tags)
The Common Welfare Economy provides an economic systemic alternative to the free market as well as to the centrally planned economy, a completely different way and partly also a synthesis from both major historical concepts.
The crisis is 30 years old, not three years old. The causes of the crisis should be tracked down in the real goods-producing economy, not in the financial markets. The financial markets were keep alive up to the collapse of the speculative bubble by credit-financed demand.
economy
Refund California Action Results in 11 Arrests. Photo Set 2 (tags)
First Major Arrests of Occupy LA Associated Protesters Photo Set 2 of 2
Refund California Action Results in 11 Arrests. (tags)
First Major Arrests of Occupy LA Associated Protesters Photo Set 1 of 2
Underway to Plutocracy: Financial Crisis (tags)
No promise of salvation can be imputed to capitalism any more.. The market is regarded as a natural law and power of fate. Nothing but Darwinism was left of the liberals' hope for progress. That Darwinism rejoices in the survival of the fittest and the sorting out of weaker debtors.
The Economy Sinks in a Deep Crisis of Meaning (tags)
Economists are compared with astrologers and mocked as crystal-ball readers because they are frequently way off the mark with their growth forecasts. Economists have not learned the great lessons. Mainstream economy entrenched itself behind a model world and often faded out reality.
Hard Times Getting Harder (tags)
economy
Supermarket Strike is Looming (tags)
The UFCW announced that they cancelled their contract, and are giving 72 hours notice that they may strike.
Our economic system has no future (tags)
A sustainable future requires facing the realities of waste and speculation. The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The economy should serve humankind, not vice versa.
US Election 2012: Stewart Alexander Expecting Little from Obama?s Jobs Speech (tags)
Presidential Candidate Alexander says, ?I would not place too much faith in Obama?s jobs program; I think it?s too little and it is almost too late.? Alexander also question Obama?s commitment to tax big corporation and the super rich; ?It is the capitalist elite who will back Obama for a second term in the White House.?
Politics in the Crisis Trap (tags)
A discontinuance of debt-financed economic programs leads to an economic slack period resulting in stagnation and recession. Crisis policy finds itself in a philosophical paradox. The political class can only choose between more indebtedness up to state bankruptcy (with hyper-inflation) or harsh austerity programs.
economy
The World is Out of Joint (tags)
The financial crisis has become a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy."
Work Sharing is the Answer (tags)
"Even before the market turmoil took over the news, the economy was largely dead in the water, expanding at a pace too slow to even keep up with the growth rate of the labor force, much less to make up for the 10 million jobs lost due to the downturn."
Zombie Housing, Zombie Banks, Zombie Governments: Economy Cassandra Says Marx was Right (tags)
"Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can destroy itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand, and that's what's happening." --Nouriel Roubini
class war
The US, the Debt Superpower (tags)
The state bailout of these gigantic real estate institutes, banks and insurances and the enormous economic package to get the crisis-weakened economy on its feet again is one of the essential causes of the present debt crisis. In two decades, $5.5 trillion was spent on a dozen wars.
Problems In the US Economy (tags)
We can propel our economy out of recession and quite easily. It is unfortunate all the doom and gloom in the media about the greatest economy ever created in the history of mankind. The US economy will soon surpass 20 Trillion Dollars per year,
America's Cratering Economy (tags)
economy
"There is an alternative to profit maximization" (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be privatized and confiscated by the economy. The public sector must be expanded to create jobs.
On the Failure of the Mainstream Economy (tags)
The neoliberal mainstream economy and its political backers experienced their Waterloo with the most serious financial and economic crisis in eight decades. States bailed out banks and banks made money by lending back to states. A policy of reduced working hours is necessary.
Globalization and Media (tags)
Media theory starts from the idea that a changed media technology changes society and builds new communities. For the first time, the reader or recipient can also be a sender. The net opens up the horizon of democracy beyond constitutional and representative democracy.
Dismissively Ignoring Hard Times (tags)
depression
U.S. Election 2012: Alexander Proposing "A Better Deal" for Economic Recovery (tags)
To achieve his vision to create good paying jobs and establishing a viable economy, Alexander is hoping to receive the Presidential Nominations for the Socialist Party USA, the Green Party USA and the Peace and Freedom Party-California. Presently, Stewart Alexander is the only presidential candidate that has openly challenged President Obama from the Left.
Fukushima Mon Horreur - The Dream of Economic Reason Gives Birth to Tremendous Catastrophe (tags)
In "Anti-Duhring," Frederick Engels explained that nature also has a history and that capitalism tends to destroy its own foundations and nature. The negative is bound to the positive as conservation of energy is bound to transformation of energy.
Education of the Homo Oeconomicus (tags)
The school system should not only produce students with a narrowed economic view. Society consists of more than the sum of benefit-maximizing individuals.An economic system with fewer income differences, regulated financial markets and welfare state brings greater stability.
U.S. Election 2012- Stewart Alexander: Jobs Report a Disaster for Obama (tags)
President Barack Obama recently kicked off his 2012 re-election campaign; however, the sluggish economy and the president?s failure to create jobs could threaten his hopes for re-election. With all the bad news on the economy, the president still remains the favorite to win in 2012. President Obama is a formidable fundraiser and has the financial backing of Wall Street and could spend as much a $1 billion for re-election; and approaching November 2012, the Republican field of presidential hopefuls appears to be hopeless.
Video: Crisis is not Behind us (tags)
Randall Wray is a professor of economics at the University of Missouri.
"Beyond Growth" congress in Berlin, May 20-22. 2011 (tags)
A "Beyond Growth" congress will be held in Berlin, May 20-22. 2011. The driving forces of growth, the limits of growth, the crisis of the work society, an economy beyond growth, justice and the globalized world, sharing and the good life will be discussed.
Economics as Brainwashing and Careerist Gets the Job (tags)
The self-regulating market and stgylizing all problems as exogenous, not endogenous are fatal myths as proven by Enron, Tepco, Citigroup and all corporate tax cheats. Can the real economy survive when financial profits amount to 40% of all profits? Viva economic learning!
We live on credit, shift costs and risks into the future and make possible a prosperity with the help of a policy of cheap money that is paid for by others. An interest-free money system would be a counter model to the growth pressure inherent in the present system.
Economic Recessions in America (tags)
The US economy, and for that matter the global economy, is a living, breathing thing. With that analogy in mind, we find that the comparison is closer than most of us would normally think.
The U.S. is More Greek than Greece (tags)
Deficit economies were organized mainly by finance capital. The expansion of this credit-financed mass demand went along with the expansion of the financial sector. Trillions of dollars and Euros were pumped in the stabilization of financial markets.
The Government and the Housing Market (tags)
The housing market has long been the measuring stick of how well the economy is doing or how badly it is doing.
PHILIPPINES: Our Failed Labor-Export Policy (tags)
The impacts of disasters occurring in other parts of the world, from Libya to Japan, have perhaps been communicated more drastically to the Philippines than to other countries. Whether it is the tragic trilogy of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear fallout in Japan or the civil war in Libya, external crises are swiftly transformed into internal crises for our country, as thousands of families are pushed into poverty and economic hardship when their breadwinners are dislocated and repatriated back to the Philippines, where jobs offering decent wages are scarce.
Tepco is the End of the Market Economy (tags)
Tepco operated antiquated nuclear reactors and glossed over the hard of a meltdown. The Japanese government will probably nationalize the firm since it cannot pay a fraction of its liabilities. What lessons do we learn? Should the public sector be expanded? We are all Wisconsin
Basic Income: The Way out of a Sick Society (tags)
Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Without the social contract, the state becomes a trough for the super-rich. Basic income could enable everyone to participate in social, economic and political life. Without vision, the people perish.
Video: An Upside-Down Economy (tags)
A wide-ranging interview with Rob Johnson on austerity, taxes, money and politics
One Land, Two Economies (tags)
Economic prosperity and progress for the president are obviously synonymous with robustly higher profits for businessmen and stock speculators. The large majority of Americans must suffer more because the crisis is not over for them.
Dollar-Yuan Currency War (tags)
The value of the Yuan is not the cause for the US trade and balance of payments deficits. The reasons are the high state indebtedness (armaments/ wars and tax gifts to the rich) and the indebtedness of private households. The US has a trade deficit with 90 countries.
El Salvador's Sweatshop Economy (tags)
sweatshops
After Mubarak: What's Next? (tags)
revolution
The End of the "Golden Age" of Capitalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism (tags)
"The central point is that the financial sphere has the potential of developing into an autonomous subsystem of the whole economy with an enormous capacity of self-expansion..Like cancer, it has no internal control mechanism. It can only be brought under control by external interventions"
Prepping Minds for War Against China (tags)
You'd think the U.S. was already at war with China, given the immense amount of anti-China rhetoric spouting from the government and media. But selling wars takes time. The average American hasn't bought in to this false advertising yet. So the big lie will be repeated until its roots are deeply sunk into the American psyche: China, says the U.S. government, is a threat that needs to be "dealt with.” This propaganda assault is multi-faceted, taking aim from all directions. Any China-related issue -- military, economic, and social -- is open for attack. For example, the head of the U.S. Department of Defense, Robert Gates, recently visited Asia and focused much of his trip talking about China as a "military threat.”
Last Chance for Venezuela's Revolution? (tags)
The pulse of the revolution grows faint. Extreme measures are needed, since the extremely poor living conditions of most Venezuelans demand it. They are tired of the government taking half actions. Tired of the same super-rich oligarchy dominating the economy, which creates the horrendous inequality that overshadows Venezuelan society. If the revolution is not quickly pushed to the left, it will be strangled by the right. For all the positive things Chavez has accomplished as President, he is in danger of becoming another Salvador Allende -- a martyr whose death ushered in a right-wing dictatorship.
True and False Causes of the Financial Crisis (tags)
If we can produce enough for all in superfluity-and we are already technically in this position-why must the whole enormous social wealth be squeezed through the needle of buying and selling, money, profit and growth? We all deserve something better than capitalist crisis economy.
MY PEARLS IN TWITTER FOR REUTERS (tags)
It is necessary to scrub in the journalists' face the world just as we see it to prove that we see more than the propagandas that they do.
Beware of Wikileaks: Or at least those leaks chosen by western “imperialist press" (tags)
"What is interesting here is the suggestion that the remarks are deep and valuable due to the author’s so-called ‘knowledge’ of the Euro-Asian mafia. The inclusion of Belarus in this ‘leak’ is particularly puzzling. Belarus has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe. The President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has been continuously re-elected since 1994, due to his progressive social policies and no one denies his obvious popularity. Yet he is consistently slandered as a ‘dictator’. While Belarus does have close connections with Russia, relations between the two countries have soured recently over energy disputes, geopolitical differences and Belarus’s refusal to pursue free-market policies. Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko in particular, has been indefatigably demonised in the international press for his refusal to privatise the Belarusian economy, opening up publicly owned industries to international, finance capital mafia. President Lukashenko’s refusal to indebt his country through IMF loans together with the robust performance of the Belarusian economy since the outbreak of the global economic crisis, have won the Belarusian leader the praise and close friendship of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who has described Belarus as model socialist economy. Yet Wikileaks considers a flippant and mendacious comment by a Spanish prosecutor to be ‘deep and valuable’? Here we can see ideology masquerading as objective truth. A flippant opinion by a Spanish prosecutor is considered ‘deep and valuable’ because he should know such things. The Wikileak is in reality not a revelation at all. It is simply the publication of a highly dubious statement with an ideological assumption appended. Here the Wikileak serves to bolster the negative view of the country engineered by the acolytes of the corporate media to demonise a respectable socialist democracy. Far from undermining US imperialism, this Wikileaks ‘revelation’ slanders a law-abiding country by associating it with criminality and terrorism."
The Silence of Economists (tags)
In 1936 Keynes was the first established economist who explained how a free enterprise system in no way realized a state of balance by itself. The state must take an active role in crisis times to prevent an economic downswing ending in a catastrophe.
The Crisis, Money and Us (tags)
"One we had a coordinated social market economy. This `Rhine' capitalism embodied the insight gained in bitter experience that totally freed markets are self-destructive. This insight was lost somewhere between Friedman and Hayek, Thatcher and Reagan.."
More on Obama's Capitulation and Betrayal (tags)
capitulating to Republicans
Seven Reasons Why the Economy Can't Recover (tags)
As the recession grinds on, politicians in most industrial countries have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the supposed coming economic recovery. Some say the recession is over. Obama is in the group that claims we're on "the road to recovery,” while other nations can only spot recovery "on the horizon.” Below are seven important social phenomena that point to a more realistic economic and political outlook. 1) Central Banks are Dumbfounded. The usual tricks that U.S. and European central banks use to avoid recessions are long-exhausted. Interest rates cannot get any lower. And because cheap money wasn't working, the printing press was turned up a notch, into what the U.S. federal reserve calls quantitative easing -- injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the world economy, escalating an emerging trade war.
Economics is not a Science (tags)
"Observations are central in a subject like economics where experiments are not possible.. Mathematics is misused to transport a certain ideology, the neoclassical theory of the market.. Capitalist crisis phenomena have made a fool of the harmony theory of the market.."
Worldwide Economic Crisis 2.0 or the Collapse of Neoliberal Finance Capitalism (tags)
The present crisis is a consequence of the fact that exploding business profits found inadequate investment opportunities in the productive sector and turned instead to financial speculation. Deregulation created "law-free" spaces" with the abrogation of all political controls.
Free Internet Book: Enough is Enough! (tags)
Have you had enough of infinite growth, environmental destruction, currency wars, vulgar materialism, social cuts, generalized insecurity and resource wars? How can anyone say the left has no alternatives to the status quo? Download the 10-page summary or the 130-page report.
Ruling on Behalf of Wall Street's "Super Rich": The Financial End Time has Arrived (tags)
"Alas, the Obama administration has backed the Geithner-Bernanke policy that “the economy” cannot recover without saving the debt overhead. The reality is that it is the debt overhead that is destroying the economy. So we are dealing with the irreconcilable fact that the Obama position threatens to lower living standards from 10% to 20% over the coming few years – making the United States look more like Greece, Ireland and Latvia than what was promised in the last presidential election. Something has to give politically if the economy is to change course. More to the point, what has to give is favoritism for Wall Street at the expense of the economy at large. What has made the U.S. economy uncompetitive is primarily the degree to which debt service has been built into the cost of living and doing business. Post-classical “junk economics” treats interest and fees as payment for the “service” for providing credit. But interest (like economic rent and monopoly price extraction) is a transfer payment to bankers with the privilege of credit creation. The beneficiaries of providing tax favoritism for debt are the super-rich at the top of the economic pyramid – the 2% whom Mr. Obama’s tax giveaway will benefit by over $700 billion. If the present direction of tax “reform” is not reversed, Mr. Obama will shed crocodile tears for the middle class as he sponsors the Deficit Reduction Commission’s program of cutting back Social Security and revenue sharing to save states and cities from defaulting on their pensions. One third of U.S. real estate already is reported to have sunk into negative equity, squeezing state and local tax collection, forcing a choice to be made between bankruptcy, debt default, or shifting the losses onto the shoulders of labor, off those of the wealthy creditor layer of the economy responsible for loading it down with debt."
The Financial Crisis and the Failure of the Modern Economy (tags)
The US government debt shot up from 2.9% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2008 and 11.9% in 2009. At the summits of Washington, London and Pittsburg, the goat was made the gardener. Ineffective rules were resolved that hardly helped regulate the financial markets.
Relections on "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage"--NYT 11/12/10 (tags)
G20 nations reject US plans for world economy.
Obama Economic Team Passes Out the Kool-Aid (tags)
Mary Bottari is director of the Real Economy Project with the Center for Media and Democracy.
Quantitative Easing: Elixir or Poison? (tags)
QE indeed poison as being used
Science Daily reports on a new study linking health with wealth.
Vote for Barry Hess as Arizona's next Governor! (tags)
Vote for Barry Hess for Arizona's next governor. Even if Barry Hess isn't 100 percent Libertarian he is better then police state thugs Jan Brewer and Terry Goddard. And Barry is against the drug war and will pardon victimless drug war criminals.
Market Failure Wherever One Looks (tags)
7-8 million jobs lost in two years, 150,000 public sector jobs lost in September, are signs of total system incompetence. It's time to redefine state and market and adopt alternative economic policy with reduced working hours and infrastructure investment.
IMF Considers Replacing the Dollar as Key Currency (tags)
More stability and efficiency will be created and money and the credit system de-politicized. In stress situations, a world central bank could serve as creditor "of last resort" to provide the necessary liquidity in the whole system in case of grave shocks.
BILL GATES & WARREN BUFFETT ARE OILING THE INTERNATIONAL POOR$ $QUEAKY WHEEL NOT AMERICA$ (tags)
THEY PRETEND FOR THEIR FAMILY & FRIENDS TO CARE DEARLY ABOUT THEIR FELLOW MAN OTHER THEN THEIR FELLOW NEEDY AMERICANS.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fight Inequality, Don't Scapegoat Immigrants (tags)
"The emergence of vast inequalities between the wealthy and the rest of us may be the biggest change in American society over the last fifty years. And it’s hardly a change that we should welcome."
The `Rightwing Backlash' That Never Was (tags)
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The `Rightwing Backlash' That Never Was (tags)
"Obama himself had eschewed economic populism in his campaign (making an exception in midwestern primaries such as Wisconsin [8] where he needed more working-class support in order to win), in keeping with his carefully cultivated media image of post-partisan conciliator. But the economy did the job for him, and for the Democratic party."
Economy in Service of Life (tags)
The 2004 Accra confession of the Reformed World Alliance emphasizes justice in the economy and the earth. "The ideology of neoliberalism penetrating all areas of our life is incompatible with our Christian faith.. and does not serve life."
The Political Consequences of Stagnation (tags)
My apologies to T. S. Eliot, but September, not April, is the cruelest month. Before 9/11/2001, there was 9/11/1973, when Gen. Pinochet toppled the Allende government in Chile and ushered in a 17-year reign of terror. More recently, on 9/15/2008, Lehman Brothers went bust and torpedoed the global economy, turning what had been a Wall Street crisis into a near-death experience for the global financial system.
Labor Day: Immigrants build the U.S. Economy (tags)
Undocumented immigrants streaming into this country from south of the border drive down wages and steal jobs that could otherwise go to out-of-work Americans. Right? Wrong. As it turns out, immigrant workers play an important role in building our economy.
"Capitalism has Failed" (tags)
"The investments of businesses are ridiculously low, as low as after the Second World. The reason for this may be the immense indebtedness of private households. The only thing that blossomed in the US in the last years was Wall Street-that is now killing itself.."
The Banking and Financial Crisis (tags)
"The transition from a long-term to a short-term orientation went along with the exaggerated profit goals. The approach of shareholder value sets maximum profits and dividends in the center of business policy and no longer long-term investments and the interests of employees.."
MEG WHITMAN PLEASE TELL CA VOTERS WHERE YOUR WALL STREET ~BANKER BUDDIES HID THEIR TARP $$ (tags)
MEG WHITMAN HAS NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT where HER POLITICAL BUDDIES BUSH~ ROVE $750 BILLION TARP PONZI BAILOUT MONIES REALLY WENT !!!
America Facing Depression and Bankruptcy (tags)
The worst is yet to come
Financial Crisis as Organized Irresponsibility (tags)
In the years 2002-2006, guaranteeing mortgage credits was the greatest source of profit for investment banks. US policy massively promoted and in no way curbed awarding dubious credits. In 2003 Warren Buffett described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction."
US Election 2012: Stewart Alexander Dismisses Obama’s Jobless Recovery (tags)
Alexander says financing the war and the U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan is costing U.S. jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to rebuild and repair our nation’s infrastructure; “The war and occupation is taking the U.S. economy into a full scale depression.”
Obama's Delusions: The Economy and Iraq (tags)
If you’ve listened to recent speeches the President has given about the economy and the Iraq war, you’d think that two of the biggest social issues facing working Americans are improving. But facts are stubborn things. Take for example the numbers of jobs lost in the last two months: 221,000 in June, 131,000 in July. Instead of taking the drastic measures needed to stop the continued hemorrhaging, the President had this to say on August 5th:
Crisis as Permanent State (tags)
The Federal Reserve pumped far more than a trillion without stimulating the economy. 250,000 new jobs must be created month after month to reach the 4.7% unemployment rate before the crisis. 125,000 persons stream on the labor market every month.
A Permanent Housing Collapse? (tags)
The recent chaos that erupted when 30,000 people waited hours in the Atlanta, Georgia heat to receive applications for subsidized housing is a mere symptom of a worsening national problem. The housing market appears to be on a never-ending downward spiral, with the much-discussed "recovery" always around the next corner.
A Financial Boom Despite the Crisis (tags)
For the banks, deficit state budgets become important clients. They compensate the private demand for credit. The financial boom is completely based on support measures of state organs. An economic upswing is not in sight.
Saving the system to what end? (tags)
People don’t like the system. In fact they hate it. The system has made them miserable for going on thirty years.
PHILIPPINES: New Economics for a New Administration (tags)
The dominant feature of the Arroyo administration was pervasive corruption, but its most destructive legacy in the long term will probably be its policy failures. The ascent to power of a new president, backed by a new Congress, provides the opportunity for a fundamental shift in policy in order to end poverty and re-launch the Philippines on the road to development.
Life after the Peak: Capitalism and the Market Economy (tags)
All over the world there are experiments with renewable energy, solidarity economies and non-profit economic forms. A growth acceleration law will be absurd when fossil energy runs out. We will need a growth de-acceleration law.
Election 2012: Stewart Alexander Proposing a ‘Better Deal’ for Economic Recovery (tags)
Stewart Alexander says “The struggles for working people are global; we need global solutions. In the 21st Century, it has become necessary to reorganize the entire world banking system.” To meet the growing needs of working people, Alexander is proposing the creation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to help eliminate poverty and to meet the basic needs of working people and the long term needs for seniors.
True and False Causes of the Financial Crisis (tags)
The jubilant singing about free enterprise as the supposedly best of all worlds sounds much quieter than at the beginning of the 1990s. We urgently need alternatives. This is now a matter of survival. As it was taboo to doubt the rule of the church in the Middle Ages, the thought prohibition of questioning the market economy is in effect.
The economic journalism as spokesperson of the financial capital (tags)
We approached that crossing variables: when the sense production generated through the economy news section, it naturalizes or chews the lethality of the speculators' in different orders of greatness premeditated actions and the effects that cause in the day by of entire populations.
If the U.S. economy eventually recovers and current trends continue, U.S. workers won’t be celebrating in the streets. The corporate establishment has made it clear that a “strong recovery” depends on U.S. workers making “great sacrifices” in the areas of wages, health care, pensions, and more ominously, reductions in so-called “entitlement programs” — Social Security, Medicare, and other social services. These plans have been discussed at length in corporate think tanks for years, and only recently has the mainstream media begun a coordinated attack to convince American workers of the “necessity” of adopting these policies. The New York Times speaks for the corporate establishment as a whole when it writes:
Philippine Situation After the 2010 Elections (tags)
We are here today because Benigno Aquino III was elected president of the Philippines. He has promised to bring CHANGE to the Philippine government, eliminate corruption, fix the education system, improve health care, improve the economy and provide housing for all Filipinos. He has said that he is the president because the people believed in HOPE. Does this sound familiar? The Reality of the history in the Islands: Economic Crisis The Reality of the Philippines is that the islands are still ruled by US imperialism, and run by its Filipino puppets. Aquino has assembled an economic team from the same breed of pro-imperialist pro neoliberlization economists who have dominated economic policy-making in the Philippines for the past three decades. Some of whom have even served the US arroyo regime.
The Financial and Economic Crisis as a Normative Orientation Crisis (tags)
Prof. Ulrich presents three core theses: (1) Economics is not an end-in-itself but the means to the good life and human coexistence. (2) There is no "free" enterprise system free of ethical and political prerequisites. (3) The need for emancipatory economic citizenship rights.
Deficit Hysteria: Wrongheaded in Times of Depression (tags)
proposed policies are wrecking economies
Stimulus or Austerity: the People vs. the Banks (tags)
The most powerful nations in the world met recently at the G-20 in Toronto and managed to agree on only one thing of significance: the need to reduce deficits, “half by 2013.” Implied by the statement is the need to lower deficits via “austerity,” meaning eliminating or reducing social programs. Why does every mainstream political pundit or corporate CEO fanatically agree that reducing deficits is the most important thing to do now? Let Obama explain:
The future of the welfare state in the context of globalization - the German example (tags)
Following the political, social, economic and human catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century and the liberation from fascism in 1945, there was broad consensus in Germany that the socio-economic reconstruction should move toward securing economic prosperity...
NOW WE GET IT~ AMERICAN POOR MUST BE GOING TO BE BLESSED BY INTERNATIONAL BILLIONAIRES ?? (tags)
COOL IT POOR AMERICANS, MAYBE THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY OF WEALTHY ELITE BILLIONAIRES WILL BE SENDING THEIR CHARITY $$ TO OUR AMERICAN POOR ???
The Financial Market Must Become a Public Service (tags)
An institutional crisis faces us, not individual failure. Egoism makes one short-sighted; greed makes one blind. Capitalism is not simply a market system. Capitalism is a social order. Therefore it cannot be left to economists to decide which laws of the market should operate.
Can a Person Own HIs/Her Mother? (tags)
No one can own what exists in nature except nature. A human cannot own its own mother. However western ownership systems have been forced on us again and again that contradict our worldview and our values. Ubunto is another example: "I only live when you live."
Marcoses come close to full circle (tags)
With three of them now holding elective posts – including one senator – the Marcoses have come close to full circle.
Overcoming the Dominance of Finance Capital (tags)
Changing power relations means taking up the social and political struggle against finance capital and regaining control over social resources. Reversing the redistribution of income from top to bottom is a prerequisite for containing the money flows in the financial sector.
BRAZIL IN 2025: DESTRUCTION or DEVELOPMENT (tags)
Brazil commemorates... but the black clouds didn't vanish.
Work- and Social Criticism in the Time of Capitalist Running Amok (tags)
The term social goes through a fundamental change of meaning. Earlier social described an obligation of society to its members. Today the little word social stands for the caring duty of members of society toward the capitalist machine
In the Streets for Human Rights: A People Without Borders (tags)
The recent immigrant rights demonstration in San Diego May 1 was inspiring, but a real solution to the immigration question will come only when we can disenthrall the American people from hateful corporate propaganda that pits disadvantaged groups against each other and convinces millions of Americans that their economic and social problems are caused by people below them, not people above. So-called “illegal” immigrants are just another in the long line of scapegoats corporate and Right-wing propagandists invoke to keep people confused and lead them to challenge each other instead of their corporate overlords.
IMF it is sabotaging the Brazilian economy.
The Economics Behind Immigration Reform (tags)
How convenient for Goldman Sachs. Just as most working people were demanding that the Goldman bosses and other Wall Street criminals either be massively fined, jailed or worse, the nation’s attention is suddenly forced to react to the racist immigration law in Arizona. And although the two incidents are not directly related, they represent a trend that is likely to increase in the months and years ahead.
The Bank Tribunal in Berlin (tags)
Even today most radical market liberals do not see beyond their ideological blinders and explain the financial market crisis as a state breakdown. The financial catastrophe is a fiasco of their religious doctrine. The catastrophe plunged the dominant economy into a crisis of meaning.
There is only one economy (tags)
The stock exchange produces nothing. Speculations and bets do not create any assets, even if the daily stock market reports on television try to get us to believe the opposite. That the financial markets make themselves independent is the result of political decisions.
The "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity (tags)
the recovery is the big lie
The business sector of the U.S. — particularly the giant corporations that dominate our economy — literally regard themselves as above the law. Not only do they pay millions of dollars in legal bribes to politicians under the guise of “campaign contributions” to gain legislation that makes them BILLIONS in additional profits, they merrily disregard existing laws on issues ranging from labor to the environment to health and safety and paying their taxes. And a U.S. population brainwashed by decades of Right-wing propaganda extolling the private sector and the “free market” as good, efficient and honest — and damning the public sector as ineffective and hopelessly corrupt — has led most Americans to see government, not corporations, as their real enemy.
Alternatives to Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism, financial market-driven capitalism, intensifies the crises. However the root of evil lies in the developmental laws of capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on double standards and double speak where CEOs are job creators and workers are cost factors.
Caught in the Infinite Loop of a Nightmare (tags)
Since politics has no strategies of its own to re-stabilize the economic system, it hopes in the self-healing powers of the market after the bank bailout... The hosts of decision-makers were simply "falsely programmed" in their education.
Debt Dynamite Dominoes: The Coming Financial Catastrophe (tags)
-When the crisis is over, the middle classes of the western world will have been liquidated of their economic, political and social status. The global economy will have gone through the greatest consolidation of industry and banking in world history leading to a system in which only a few corporations and banks control the global economy and its resources; governments will have lost that right. The people of the western world will be treated by the financial oligarchs as they have treated the ‘global South’ and in particular, Africa; they will remove our social structures and foundations so that we become entirely subservient to their dominance over the economic and political structures of our society.-
"We are in the Greatrest Financial Bubble of all Time" (tags)
"An old world perishes as a new world arises-pictorially comparable to a caterpillar that dies because the butterfly comes to life. What is called financial crisis is only a superficial symptom.. One of the main causes of the debacle is the Americanized corporate governance." (F.Malik)
Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As usual (tags)
Expect business as usual ahead
CHINA’S ECONOMY OVERHEATS? (tags)
—As the Chinese authorities greets the new year 2010 as the “ year of the tiger” with high hopes, many economic observers in the west says it is “ over-heating.” This observation was made after China posted a 10.7 growth rate last year. This was attributed to the Chinese government stimulus or infusion of money to the economy much like what the US did in 2008-2009
Prerequisites for Overcoming the Financial Crisis (tags)
"In analyzing financial crises, real causes should be differentiated from the side-effects. One of the essential causes for the current crisis is the discrepancy between the linear growth of the real economy and the exponential growth of financial management created by the derivative-economy,"
The Next Crash is Brewing (tags)
The economic way of thinking enforced for a quarter of century is one of the structural factors that helped this "economy of depression" breakthrough. This dominant doctrine denies the role of demand and concentrates on the problems limiting the supply of goods & services
Remarks by Richard L. Trumka, President, AFL-CIO, National Press Club, Washington, DC (tags)
Our economy does not work without good jobs, so we must take action now to restore workers' voices in America. The systematic silencing of American workers by denying our right to form unions is at the heart of the disappearance of good jobs in America. We must pass the Employee Free Choice Act so that workers can have the chance to turn bad jobs into good jobs, and so we can reduce the inequality which is undermining our prospects for stable economic growth. And we must do it now—not next year, not even this summer. Now.
Lessons from the Crisis (tags)
Governments are extorted by multinational corporations. Those who made massive profits with bank business must now answer for the losses. The taxpayer may not pay for their crises. If control is not exercised by politics, banks will become absolute rulers with a state guarantee.
'Making Cents: Life Below the Bottom Rung' (tags)
A new series of oil paintings examining the daily existence of people making a living in the worst working conditions in the global economy.
Four Videos for the New Year (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. Shriveling the financial sector is vital for a future of generalized security and environmental caring.
The system itself is degenerate. The great financial crisis is the trigger for seeking another capitalism. Deregulation becomes an end-in-itself; the state per se is of the devil. The state should be taken seriously as a production factor.
As 10 years ago, there is again resistance against the chaotic, polarizing destructive power of the markets and against the false alternatives of the governments. A globally democratized climate justice requires turning away from the status quo and the "imperial lifestyle."
The Consequences of the Digital Disruption for the Economy (tags)
The greatest social and economic revolution since industrialization opens up unlimited possibilities for people and businesses. Craigslist made a million-dollar business out of a billion-dollar business. A redefinition of unemployment and a discussion of unconditional basic income are inevitable.
Protecting Capitalists or the Welfare State (tags)
Banks and hedge brought disaster upon themselves and their customers with their "innovations" and financial products.. Financial management may never be uncoupled from the real economy and lead a life of its own without economic justification or social responsibility.
Every Dishwasher Will NIot Become a Millionaire (tags)
Citizens of the US are tyrannized by "dead ideas," Matt Miller insists. One dead idea is that taxes damage the economy. With taxes, long-term advantages can be created for the economy when the government invests in the infrastructure.
Two Anniversaries: Berlin and Seattle (tags)
November 2009 was not only the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — an historical milestone reported to death by the corporate media — it was also the anniversary of an event the corporate media chose to ignore: the 10th anniversary of the mass protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in November and December 1999. The challenge for radicals and progressives today is not only to revitalize the spirit of Seattle but to take back the initiative in an era in which the biggest and most confrontational mass actions are being staged by the "teabag" Right.
The Dominance of the Financial Sector is a Mortal Danger (tags)
"This huge wealth transfer from the `real' economy to the world of finance has also created a vicious cycle of credit dependency.."
Why I Voted NO on H.R. 3962 (Health Care) (tags)
Outside of the business as usual misinformation coming from medical insurance corporation spokespersons claiming Obama's healthcare plan is "socialist", very few legitimate critiques of Obamacare have made headlines. Here is another "NO" vote against H.R. 3962, though this time for very different reasons.
Will the Great Depression Be Repeated? (tags)
Global trade fell 30 percent three years after the crash. The US gross domestic product shriveled 40 percent. In 1932, every fourth American was without a job. In Germany, industry only produced half of what was produced three years before.
(Commentaries on Science, Religion, Spiritualism, Politics and The Resource Based Economy)
A New Paradigm: The New Deal of the 1930s (tags)
The New Deal that led out of the worldwide economic crisis in the 1930s was based on the combination of a new technical-economic model with a new socio-economic model. Obama's achievement is not turning the necessity of overcoming the crisis against the social principle
The climate- and financial crises have one thing in common. Both are consequences of a gigantic market failure. Nature and the future of humanity are not at the table when market actors negotiate conditions and aim at their advantages.
Is Growth Only Possible Through Inequality? (tags)
Does capitalism make the rich richer and the poor poorer instead of creating prosperity for everyone as promised? Inequality declined considerably between 1930 and 1970 in western industrial states.
Planned Economy Instead of Chaos Economy (tags)
For years US imports have doubled US exports. For 10 years China has contributed $2 billion a day to finance US consumerism. Trade policy in the WTO, GATT and NAFTA have led to mass unemployment. Part time work for all and/or unconditional basic income could humanize society and assure dignified life.
What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers (tags)
A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans.
From the Past Can you Hear These Chimes Ringing? (tags)
In our short lives, your short experiences of being alive, as what you could recall experience- with the events that culminate who you are in life- are you really ready for the things that are about to happen? The quaking earth below you shakes, and you know this. The conception of the Windchime Project was just a foreshadow of what was going to happen, and the barriers of your world are going to crumble heavily down upon you. From the day your born, into this world of economy, of monetary belief systems, of this destructive civilization, you are conditioned. But obviously I think you would know that. Could there be a critique of anarchists who find themselves trying to struggle with the economy like everyone else, so situated on just getting a job and not casting aside the actual chains that have entombed us to a mere pile of flesh and bone? Or mostly the fact of arriving food issues and the fact that gardening permaculture and sustainable alternatives aren't being concentrated on? And lastly moving beyond the typical models of food not bombs, free markets, identity propaganda and image fashion of bandannas? or mostly TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY. and mostly, this movement, this life of ours, this idea of challenging the powers that smash our ribs on these iron gears... needs maturity, needs to understand that pop culture, subculture needs to die a horrible death. Needs to be strung upon a banner, it's entrails hanging so as not to make the same mistakes, if not to be so descriptive. When our friends die, when our hearts cry, when our fists are smashed my batons or we have been shot by the pigs and thier unrelenting assualt. ask yourself, how serious you really are. -A Most Concerned Wild One
How Neoliberal Ideology Destabilized the World Balance: Krugman and Galbraith (tags)
"If the depression has not openly erupted, all the features of the 1930s are having a spectacular comeback." (Paul Krugman) To free the US from the claws of private interests, James Galbraith urges the public authority to set social and ecological norms.
After the recent unemployment numbers were announced, smug politicians promising economic recovery stuttered a bit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Mainstream economists were predicting a smooth upswing in employment, but in September 263,000 more jobs were lost, 62,000 more than August. Obama reacted predictably to the surprise. He first pointed out that “employment is the last thing to recover from a recession,” and concluded that “…we are going to need to grind out this recovery, step by step.” Brilliant.
Capitalism Criticism 2.0 (tags)
Marx identified the falling rate of profit and the self-destruction of competition as contradictions of capitalism. Wages do not keep up with investments in machinery. Speculation and the explosion of the financial markets were encouraged by deregulation and higher profits.
Chinese Revolution 60 years on: socialist revolution, capitalist restoration (tags)
October 1 will mark 60 years since Mao Zedong proclaimed the creation of the Peoples Republic of China. This followed the victory of the People’s Liberation Army, led by the Communist Party of China, over the US-backed Guomindang (Nationalist Party).
Globalization and the New Political Movements (tags)
Attac, a global justice network in many European countries, demands closing off-shore tax havens and debt cancellation for the third world. The word globalization has a function as a threat. Be flexible because capital is flexible and the state can do nothing!
Long Live Tobin. Commentary on Financial Regulation (tags)
"Turner's demand for introduction of a global Tobin tax on all financial transactions is a very old demand. The tendency of banks to take flight in casino capitalism and neglect their role as servants of the real economy has made the crisis into a real fix for us.."
The First Shots of the Trade War (tags)
With the G-20 summit approaching, cheerful talk of “international cooperation” fills the White House press-room. These comments carry with them the implication that “free trade” is integral to “cooperation,” a fact made explicit in the last meeting of the G-20. There, in the name of “united action,” world leaders agreed not to install any new protectionist measures. Since then, protectionist measures have flourished. Instead of global cooperation we have its opposite: international tensions are on the rise as trade disputes sharpen.
GERMANY: What Lessons Do We Learn from the Financial Crisis? (tags)
Rating agencies were paid by the firms to be rated. Ultimately rational individual conduct led to an irrational collective result. The lesson is clear. On the way of regulation or taxation, banks must be given a massive incentive to remain small.
Leopards Can’t Change Their Spots, Nor Can Capitalists (tags)
Despite all the rhetoric, nothing much has changed and the fundamental contradictions of the system remain. The only solution is to rid ourselves of it.
Beyond Market and State (tags)
In a "post-democracy," the interests of global corporations prevail with the continuing facade of democratic institutions and procedures. Interest in politics in the population is very low. Criticism of neoliberalism brings together many movements and groups.
Last Dance for Capitalism (tags)
Capitalism reaches its inner limit and strangulates itself and the environment. Increasingly effective measures lead to fewer and fewer workers producing ever-greater quantities. The real economy becomes an appendage of speculation bubbles.
The Crisis of Capitalism: Credit-Doping (tags)
"The social market economy blows the wealth of this society in speculation rather than in higher wages, higher pensions or unemployment benefits.. All capital transactions with tax havens should be prohibited.. Instead of democratization, we growing centralization in a few hands.."
California’s Unemployment at 60 Year High, at Depression Levels (tags)
The news out of Washington is suggesting that the bottom of the economic decline is here, and last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke stated that the “economy is leveling out;” however, the people with the Peace and Freedom Party, based in California, is dismissing the Federal Reserve report as propaganda that will only benefit Wall Street.
Cash for Geezers: Retirement for Boomers at 55 (tags)
Beloved Air America host in the mornings, Thom Hartmann and Eduardo Galeano could turn our days to light.
World Bankers Agree: The Recession is Over...Maybe (tags)
Few would consider the opinions of the world's central bankers to be unbiased or even accurate. These self-proclaimed wise men of international finance didn't see the recession coming until it blew up in their faces - a blast that destroyed their credibility. Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear them talk, not because they're fun to listen to, but because of "the messaging" that rich investors use religiously in placing their stock market bets, while the rest of us are given a calming sermon, so that the bankers' lackeys - the politicians - may continue ruining the country uncontested.
The Crisis of Speculative Capitalism (tags)
The bubble bursts when debtors cannot pay and a bankruptcy crisis develops at the end.. The illusion of the stock exchange as a roulette with guaranteed permanent profits burst with the New Economy bubble..Only the worldwide regulation of the financial markets can avert their collapse.
In the US, people have lived above their means for years and now must permanently lower their living standard. In America as in Europe, economists expect a tremendous rise in unemployment in the fall. This does not mean people will shop more.
Review: Karl Polanyi-How the State Created Capitalism (tags)
In "The Great Transformation" (1944), Karl Polanyi deconstructs the myth of a free market economy that develops naturally and spontaneously and the idea of the state as a counter-pole to capital. The transformation of labor and land into commodities was a painful process.
Global Depression and Regional Wars (tags)
economic hard times and wars
Investments of the state in the infrastructure, in educational- and social services, are urgently necessary. One positive aspect of the crisis is that the financial sector has begun to shrivel. The shriveling of the financial sector must be accompanied and controlled by the state.
Self-Abandonment of the System (tags)
The banks are seemingly on Victory Street and taxpayers face bankruptcy. Bailing out banks by printing money is a dubious recovery. Paulson, Bernanke, Summers and Geithner are the architects of a policy of easy money. The money given to banks does not reach the economy.
Dems and Reps Unite for Cuts (tags)
While billionaires get bailed out and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue THE BUDGET CRISIS IS A LIE! THERE IS MONEY THE RICH ARE STEALING IT.
The Crisis in the Crisis or How Sick is the System (tags)
Crisis is a synonym for experiences of difference. It changes something. Afterwards nothing will be as in the past. Until recently the "manager" and "business" were models for all areas of life. Do private vices always become public virtues?
"The Open Internet is in Danger" (tags)
The IT-branch is part of the solution. The best solution is balance or eco-social equalization. The Finnish constellation produces the greatest prosperity. Higher prosperity arises out of a state of balance, not under Brazilianization conditions.
Zhibin Gu: China stock market, outsourcing, banking, finance, politics map (tags)
how to walk out the mud of global financial cisis? How to get better world politics and business map? Is Chinese century arriving sooner? What is really behind all the changes inside Chinese and Indian politics, business, finance and society? Get most provocative economic and political lessons and knowledge from a timely book covering long history and revolution of both Mao's era and current capitalist revolution in relation to world finance, competition, and entrepreneurship.
A 25-Hour Week Would Be Enough (tags)
Prestigious businesses urge their workers to work less. In principle, rising productivity is full of blessings. It made possible reducing working hours since the Second World War. In crisis, the music stops playing. This crisis could be a chance to reform our working hoiurs model.
"Crises belong to capitalism as the cyclone belongs to the weather.. A social division went along with the neoliberal turn. The welfare state mutated to a repressive crisis management of a growing mass poverty..Greenspan's dollar glut kindled a global deficit economy.."
The Crisis and the Left: Democratizing instead of Privatizing (tags)
"Neoliberalism has no future..Since time immemorial, (neo-) liberals have wanted as little democracy as possible as an unavoidable evil that should not get in the way of the real kingdom of freedom, the capitalist market economy.."
From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy (tags)
This past week was the United States Society for Ecological Economics bi-annual conference (at American University near Washington DC). Herman Daly was honored for his many and longstanding contributions.
"The logic of the stock corporation leads to all profits ultimately being used to raise the stock price which promotes speculation." The only way to solve mass unemployment, destruction of the environment and trade imbalance is to break out of the system and pursue qualitative growth."
Risk Development and Dollar Inflation (tags)
Two articles by emeritus professor Elmar Altvater reveal the contradictions of credit or bubble prosperity in the counter-revolution of capital. As work cannot define us, competitiveness and profit maximization do not define the human experience Speculation could bring a new feudalism..
On Krauthammer, Obama and even Bush (tags)
Has Obama's Shelf-Life Expired?
California Showing No Signs of Economic Recovery (tags)
It is important to note that most of California’s economic woes have less to do with the national recession; California has a leadership problem in Sacramento. Under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger, California’s economy has been suffering a continuous decline. Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature have led California into a sea of red ink and have protected special interested groups over the public’s interest.
Zhibin Gu: China's illness: self-appointed government vs corruption (tags)
Watch out on the hidden corruption of China! Is China's surging economy to be ruined by a self-appointed bureaucracy? Is China able to escape the deadly traps of lawlessness and corruption? What is really inside Chinese society, government and politics in relation to global financial crisis? Get realistic discussions and forecast on China and the world in the 21st century.
Lebanon: New Short Film from Nahr al-Bared Camp (tags)
The anarchist media collective a-films has just published a new short film ("A Sip of Coffee"/26min) from the destroyed Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp in northern Lebanon.
Ecological Justice Instead of Growth Economy for the Rich (tags)
"Now the market, the god of neoliberals, cannot help any more and speculators cry for the already instrumentalized state.. Studying pre-capitalist approaches is vital to develop a post-capitalist vision. The vision of the Bible is an economy of enough for all, an economy for life."
Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Neoliberal Ideology (tags)
The crisis has his origins in the "real" economy. Inequality is the ideological motor of neoliberfalism. German president Kohler described the financial markets as a monster. The metaphor has changed from market as rational subject to monster.
Post-neoliberalism or post-capitalism? (tags)
"Market-liberalisation was accompanied by a far-reaching de-regulation of politics. Milton Friedman called it a “neo-liberal counterrevolution” against Keynesianism..."
Austria: Crash Instead of Cash (tags)
In 1978 the Bretton Woods system broke down since the US abandoned the key function of the US dollar to print money to finance the Vietnam War.. The liberalization of the financial markets started a mechanism in which the worldwide population loses.
Italy - Document of summit protest against G8 economy in Lecce, June 12-13 2009 (tags)
In 2001 G8 met in Genova. They were violent days of the suspension of civil rights that still weigh on the collective consciousness, along with the memory and sorrow for the death of Carlo Giuliani. They were also days in which the "greatest men of the earth" developed the new creed of liberal globalization as it was a new universal religion.
The Misery of Economic Policy (tags)
The military Keynesianism since Reagan guided the streams of surplus global money-capital into the US as a "safe harbor." The orgies of deregulation and privatization cleared the way for the "assets inflation" of the financial bubble economy.
Bailout Jobs, Not Banks! (tags)
The real state of German public finance is kept secret from the public although the public should pay the bill. Union leaders parrot the fairy-tale of the evil bankers who alone caused the whole debacle. Automakers produce for the storage yard
U.S. Taxpayers Should Not Be A Pawnshop to Guarantee California Bonds (tags)
How Will California/America Recover Economically If Gasoline Hits Four to Five Dollars A Gallon, As Predicted Yesterday By Major News?
We persuaded ourselves permanent economic growth was the answer to all questions. We should now engage in a growth debate about the nature of this growth, not whether we should renounce on economic growth. Increased GDP can mean destruction of foundations in long-term
Socialist Stewart Alexander: Washington and Capitalism in Shambles (tags)
Since President Barack Obama took office in January, the U.S. economy has gone from bad to worst. Nationwide, home foreclosures continue to climb, consumer spending is down due to the credit crisis, more than 6 million Americans remain unemployed, and while paychecks are shrinking, inflation and gas prices are on the increase. The U.S. economy and capitalism is in a total mess.
Welch's Marvelous Transformation (tags)
Nearly all the excesses summarized unter the terms turbo- or casino capitalism are based on the ideology of shareholder value: the rule of financial markets over the real economy, the short-term and short-sightedness of shareholders and waves of rationalizations."
Zhibin Gu: China's deadly troubles vs global financial crisis: challenges, conflicts, war (tags)
Is global financial crisis leading to new world wars? Which nation is to emerge as the next global leader, China, India, US, or Europe? How to walk out current traps of employment, shrinking business, and leadership crisis? Should entrepreneurship lead politics and competition?
Avoiding Bailout Questions (tags)
Systemic and structural analysis is more difficult than scapegoating. Speculative greed was at the heart of the dotcom, Asian, Mexican, Argentinian and Russian crises.
Zhibin Gu: China vs global financial crisis: trends, challenges, wars (tags)
Is global financial crisis leading to new world wars ahead? Which nation is to emerge as the next global leader, China, India, US, or Europe? How to walk out current traps of employment, shrinking business, and leadership crisis? Should entrepreneurship lead politics and competition?
The Philippine Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is not safe. (tags)
The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is not safe, not economically sound, not insurable, not sustainable. It is tainted with corruption. Statement Calling for Rejection of the Proposal to Recommission the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant
Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support
The End of Finance Market Capitalism: Renaissance of Socialism? (tags)
The crisis offers an historical chance to civilize an unbridled capitalism with reform policy. The future relation of market and state is the focus of attention.. Financial markets are characterized by herd behavior. Risk consciousness disappears.
Obama Draws Fire from Socialists and Conservatives (tags)
Socialists and conservatives alike believe bigger government and heavy spending is not the answer to restructuring the U.S. economy; and even though the ideas of socialists and conservatives are vastly different, both groups are opposing the president on his enormous spending proposals that are lacking any clear plans on how to revive the economy and limit an ocean of future debt for the nation.
The Foxes Guard the Henhouse (tags)
The banks must be forced to give credits to small and medium-size businesses. The general strike in France on January 29 was a sign of hope. Shriveling the financial markets must be the goal. Free trade is the wrong medicine.
American Empire Foreclosed? (tags)
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). He can be reached via the Web site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
Lessons from 1929: Christina Romer (tags)
Roosevelt's debt-financed spending packages were historically unique since balanced state budgets were the norm..Roosevelt's New Deal led to an increase of nine to thirteen percent in the real GDP between 1934 and 1938. Charlie Rose's interview with Ms Romer is life-giving.
Albert Einstein was a socialist (tags)
Famous physicist Albert Einstein wrote the essay entitled "Why Socialism?" for the first issue of left-wing magazine "Monthly Review" (May 1949).
APRIL 25, LA EVENT FOR MUMIA: Saturday, April 25 at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont, from 5-7 PM.
Disarm the Markets! New Attac Basis Text (tags)
The therapy depends on the diagnosis. Mechanisms, instruments and actors can be identified whose action and teamwork led to the crash. The age of a unipolar world was very short. An historical chance is opening against finance capitalism.
The Culture of Mistrust (tags)
"Total mistrust prevails on the financial market. How can the state restore trust when trust in the state was decried for years? When all public affairs are changed into private affairs, citizens only see themselves as private citizens and the state becomes a business.."
Lessons from the Great Depression: Christina D. Romer (tags)
This paper was presented at the Brookings Institution Washington D.C. March 9, 2009. Christina Romer, economics professor at Berkeley, is one of President Obama's economic advisers in the Council of Economic Advisers.
The Neoliberal Revolution Devours Its Children (tags)
"Where is the child who uncovers the nakedness of the money economy?..The financial geniuses pretend to be the new gods of globalization. The builders of the Tower of Babel were modest compared to the new financial rulers of the world.
You don’t want to pay for the crisis of capital? Then just don’t do it. (tags)
A critique of the calls for demonstrations against the G20 in Berlin, Frankfurt and London under the slogan “We won't pay for your crisis! – For a solidarity society”
global economy, politics, jobs in the Chinese age: Johnson, Frank, Gu (tags)
is global financial crisis leading to a new war? Why is a new world order troublesome? How to move to the next stage world finance, economy, management, jobs, politics and competition in light of emerging giants China, India? Get provocative thoughts from 3 educators Chalmers Johnson, Andre Gunder Frank, and George Zhibin Gu.
The Goldman Sachs Coup D'etat (tags)
is nearly complete
VIDEO: Lessons of the Great Depression (tags)
Output per worker, efficiency or productivity, increased 25% from 1923-1930 while wages only increased 4%. The first problem is that people can't afford what they produce. The second problem is that we've been consuming the planet
Alexander: Food Lines Show Signs of National Depression (tags)
According to Reuters, “The previous record for food stamp enrollment was 31.6 million last September, which included “disaster” stamps for states hit by hurricanes and floods.” Today’s disaster, that has increased that number is the U.S. economy; even with the government bailouts totaling close to $3 trillion, the U.S. economy is in freefall and the lines for food stamps and unemployment benefits continue to climb.
Fallen Stars: On the Greed of Bankers and a New Morality (tags)
The economic ethicist Ulrich Thielemann explains how greed, false theories and the herd instinct caused the massive financial crisis. They had the theory when we make profits that is ultimately good for everyone.
The Casino is Closed: Reasons for the Crash (tags)
Ulrich Schafer discusses the greed for fast money, a world without rules and why the market alone cannot regulate everything. The crisis has a pre-history. The state simply abandoned control over many economic areas. The financial world in particular was left to itself.
Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next (tags)
looting the treasury continues with militarism ready to confront dissent
Obama's Mistake in Reasoning (tags)
The accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands first made possible the worldwide economic crisis. For Obama's economic policy to be successful, he must reverse the assets disparity and force the 10% with two-thirds of the assets to solidarity through higher taxes.
PHILIPPINES: Thousands of Women Marched to Demand Full Employment (tags)
Amidst a deepening economic crisis engendered by the global financial meltdown, thousands of women workers belonging to the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) poured out into the streets of key Manila, Cebu, Davao, General Santos and Cotabato, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day to demand full employment and equality between women and men.
BRENTWOOD SPRING ART SHOW, SUNDAY, APRIL 5 - TIGHT ECONOMY “BEST BET” FOR BROWSING/BUYING (tags)
Today’s economy presents shopper’s with a dilemma: save money because you might need it tomorrow, or spend money to stimulate the economy and support your community. The solution is both, but shop wisely – art shows and festivals offer browsing and buying advantages: all items are hand-made and many are one-of-a-kind collectables. The Brentwood Spring Art Show is a one-stop, boutique-type mall adventure, where event-goers save time, gas, and money!
Overstrained Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism has driven the world into the greatest disaster since Hitler and Stalin. With Ronald Reagan, a president entered the White House who constantly proclaimed the state in the end was something bad.
U.S. Senate and House Introduce Employee Free Choice Act ( EFCA ). SPFPA at the Forefront (tags)
Today is one of those defining moments in history as we introduce legislation that puts power back into the hands of the people who are truly the backbone of this economy.
Faith in the Invisible Hand of the Market is Over (tags)
The people will not be so easily convinced of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. On the contrary, people will have a clearer consciousness of the primacy of politics. The false incentive systems in the businesses must be removed.
Dave Lindorff: Kiss the Banks Goodbye and Refocus on Rebuilding the American People (tags)
"The point here is that if people aren't willing to spend money, then what good is it to give more money to banks and their shareholders, in hopes that they will start lending it?.."
On the Psychology of Neoliberalism (tags)
The claim of non-wage benefits was stylized as social misuse, recipients of high incomes as achievers and unemployment as personal responsibility. According to this ideology, the optimal conditions for gaining profits lead to prosperity for all.
"Mainstream politicians want to "fix" capitalism so we can return to a state of steady economic growth. But capitalism is broken when it is growing -- we don't want to return to business as usual. How can we use this period of economic collapse to move farther away from capitalism?"
Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays an Egg" (tags)
deepening economic crisis
23 Theses on the Capitalist Crisis (tags)
Since the middle of the 1990s, the real economy only grew on account of the expansion of credit. After the dot.com crisis, the floodgates were opened. In the next four years, the Fed brought more dollars in circulation than in the whole 200-year US history.
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Economic Crisis (tags)
economic conditions worsening
As the revered godlike head of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan pursued a policy of cheap money. Whenever the financial markets began to correct their own madness, he opened the floodgates for more money..The world stares so intensely at growth that it forgets distribution.
Instead of borrowing trillions and sticking future generations of taxpayers with the cost of bailing out a corrupt and ineffective financial system, the federal government should use the bailout money and charter a bank of its own,one that could offer loans directly to individuals and businesses and thereby stimulate the economy by providing capital to people who can't get it now from the private banks.
Toxic Plans for Toxic Assets (tags)
Obama stimulus from hell.
Capitalists Attempting to Redefine Socialism (tags)
Since Congress passed the first $168 billion government stimulus, the “S” word has become a favorite term for the corporate media in referring to socialism. It would be more appropriate to use the “S” word to refer to “stimulus” because it is evident that the capitalists are moving no closer to a transition to socialism; however, as the U.S. economic crisis continues to expand and the failure of capitalism become more apparent to the world, the wealthy ruling elite are now sustaining capitalism with one stimulus after another.
Facing the Economic Crisis (tags)
Stanley Aronowitz teaches at the City University of New York and is the author of Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future (2006). More important articles and videos are available at www.socialistproject.ca.
Obama's Bank Bailout: Bush's Plan Resurrected (tags)
To reintroduce an unpopular idea by a different name is a classic trick of politicians. Obama has done precisely this in unveiling his bank bailout plan. In a desperate attempt to distance himself from Bush, the Obama administration has added some complicated economic terms packaged into a system he simply calls the “bad bank.” The essence of the plan, however, is exactly what Bush originally proposed.
Rebuilding the House George Smashed:Can America Avoid Fascism? (tags)
America can avoid sliding into a full-blown fascist state complete with concentration camps and right wing death squads if we begin to act now. If we fail to act wisely we will face that dreaded moment when the gestapo pounds on our door in the middle of the night.
3 Recent Graphical Economic Indicators (tags)
Three major indicators were publish recently. The US economy is slowing down gravely and the signs are definitely showing the de-acceleration.
A New Administration, Tired Old Policies (tags)
Counterproductive policies heading America for depression
VIDEO: Agenda for a New Economy - David Korten (tags)
Let us be honest. We don't need to fix the old economy - We need to create a new economy. David Korten's new book, "Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth", has been in bookstores less than 10 days and I implore you to get this book and read it immediately. We have a unique opportunity to change this system and create a sustainable, life-affirming economy.
After the Meltdown: Economic Redisgn for the 21st Century-David Korten (tags)
"The task before us is to replace the culture and institutions of a twentieth-century economy designed and managed to serve financial values with the culture and institutions of a new twenty-first-century economy designed to serve life values.."
Barack Obama and the Mass Transit Revolution (tags)
An analysis of how a Barack Obama presidency might affect the American society's greenhouse gas and petroleum reduction goals and the struggle to create a first rate mass transit system in Los Angeles and California. Written for both Los Angelenos and a global audience.
VIDEO: Let Wall Street Fall - David Korten (tags)
Author of "When Corporations Rule the World" and "The Great Turning," David Korten makes his case for the complete reconfiguration of Wall Street.
The Great Chance: Basic Guaranteed Income (tags)
How else should the economy and society become more sustainable without a partial turning away from the growth society of more and more? The de-acceleration of work and life is necessary. A basic income could initiate both.
No One Can Escape the Crisis (tags)
From a long-term perspective, the crisis could bring about a radical rethinking in politics and the economy away from the mantra of shareholder value and the pursuit of short-term profits. The neoliberal model of the Washington consensus has revealed its fundamental weaknesses.
Alexander: Obama’s $825 Billion Stimulus Plan offers too little, too late (tags)
With less than 10 days in office, President Barack Obama has indicated that his $825 billion economic stimulus package will energize the U.S. economy and create future jobs for more than three million Americans. Socialists nationwide are rejecting this new call for deficit spending and are calling for programs that will meet the short and long term needs of the nation and create immediate employment for the millions of working people that are unemployed or under-employed.
Recession Raises the Question of Meaning (tags)
The facade of a sound world suddenly crumbles. Are the funds available to the productive economy or are they sinking in the swamp of a degenerate global financial- and economic system? An economy that prioritizes human needs and nature is primarily regional.
An Umbrella for Workers (tags)
The economic crisis is a structural crisis where productivity has soured and wages have stagnated. The fraud in public regional banks must end. Unemployment benefits must increase. Michael Schlecht is a union spokesperson for the German Left party (Die Linke).
The world today is undeniably chaotic — war, abject poverty, and unimaginable wealth exist side by side. In an attempt to explain the current social turmoil, some have resorted to religion and apocalypse, while others place the blame on the few bad apples that held positions of power as the economy slid into destitution. And then there are those who blame conspiracy, immigrants, or a society-wide lack of morality. All of the above explanations seem to be missing a crucial ingredient. A simple observation should be central to any explanation of the current economic crisis: There are huge surpluses (or overproduction) of houses, cars, food stuffs, and many other products that millions of people desperately need, but cannot afford to buy. This is the essence of the problem.
The Blood of the Black Sheep (tags)
Crisis and Catharsis. Capitalism begins its great self-purging to remain what it is. The Wall Street boys and girls have not forgotten how to make money amid crisis. The speculation bubbles burst. The fictional wealth dissolves in thin air thanks to falling home prices and stock prices.
Why Bailing Out Banks Doesn't Work (tags)
The New York Times recently posed an excellent question: “Why save banks if they won’t lend?” (January 19, 2009) Before the first $350 billion “installment” of the bailout, we were told that the money was needed to “unfreeze” the credit markets, meaning that banks would again be willing to lend businesses the money they needed to continue doing business. Despite hugely popular opposition, the bailout proceeded, and absolutely nothing changed.
The state wants to save the banks - why?
Back from the Wilderness: Joseph Stiglitz (tags)
Economy theory has long explained why unhindered markets do not correct themselves, why regulation was necessary and why the government had an important role to play int he economy. Many who worked for the financial markets forced a kind of market fundamentalism.
Liberal Prof Confronts Socialist Audience (tags)
Grossmont College economics professor Shahrokh Shahrokhi was invited to speak at the January 12 meeting of Activist San Diego, but though he attacked "market fundamentalism" and called for more government regulation of the economy,,public equity purchases iin the major financial firms and an extensive stimulus plan, many in the audience didn't think his proposals went far enough. They also bristled at his contention that homebuyers who took out mortgages beyond their means were partly responsible for the current economic crisis.
Sean Baker on Finance Capitalism (tags)
Education and health care are the new gold. Without massive investments in education and health care, dour country will be under-developed and under-achieving.
The Structural Crisis of the Financial System (tags)
"Introduction of taxation on speculative financial transactions must go along with a genuine nationalization that involves a change of the actual banking system into a public system and fixes the role of money as a neutral means of exchange for services."
Nader People Proven Right Again (tags)
Local Nader supporters argued Obama would retreat on his promises while Los Angeles Progressive Democrats, names omitted, assured us that Obama wouldn't do that. The Nader people failed to predict that he would do so before inauguration.
A Trillion Dollar Recovery (tags)
This article by the editor of The Nation was published 12/31/2008.
On the Financial Crisis in the 20:80 Society (tags)
The question is how we deal with the 20:80 society, not whether the 20:80 society is coming because the development is irreversible. In the long-term, work will disappear.. Jobless growth has become the normal condition.The end of work can be a great leap for humanity.
Obamanomics: Why the Stimulus Plan Will Not Revive the Economy (tags)
This article was published in: The Independent, Dec 12, 2008.
From Real Estate Speculation to Collapse of Global Deficit Economy (tags)
Joy to the world, the world of fallen idols and bubble transfer. The truth will set us free but the truth is a process, not a cudgel or stimulus. After the dot-com bubble, trillions were "invested" in real estate speculation. The crisis of the work society is the background for low interests.
Social capital has dangerously disappeared in the last years and decades. In the whole economy, there should be more cooperation and less competition, more sustainability and less monetary striving for gain. One cannot solve problems with the same thinking that caused the problems,
Wall St. and the Fed Get Fatter, While Main St. Suffers (tags)
The greed of some of the Wall St. banksters, and the Fed’s inept policies, like condoning deregulation, are the real causes of the current financial meltdown. Nevertheless, the U.S. Congress has given them a green light to rake in trillions of dollars in taxpayers’ bailout money, with little or no public disclosure. The Fed’s functions should be taken over by the Treasury Dept. Main St. needs to be Congress’ prime concern, not Wall Street.
COMMUNISM NOW DOWN TO THE LOWEST IN THE PHILIPPINES (tags)
Despite the tremendous efforts of the Communist Party in the Philippines to destabilize the government, its popularity is at its lowest.
The State Invests and Memorandum 2008 (tags)
When the state invests, it ensures that the economy will grow faster tomorrow than today: new streets, better schools and new eco-techniques. In a few years we will all earn more. Even German bank president Axel Weber urges a state economic program.
Economy Between Competition and Cooperation (tags)
"Market" already includes the concept of "symbiosis" in which two symbiots have advantages through their relation to one another. An increasing net consciousness will have a huge influence on economic interactions by strengthening the partnership principle.
Spreading the Wealth: A Review of Unjust Deserts (tags)
The foremost ethical question is, given that we owe most of our productivity to a common social inheritance, to what extent can we say that we have "earned" our personal wealth? There is a growing consensus in favor of a new robust public compact to regulate our shared conditions.
Financial Crisis and the Poor (tags)
The financial market crisis has long spilled over on the real economy. Therefore politics is called to do everything so the economy starts up again and unemployment is prevented. Without strong pressure, frauds will continue unchanged in the global financial casino after losses are socialized
II-The international Crisis WS Report, Curitiba, Pr, Br (tags)
Watch it now at web tv at http://www.aenoticias.pr.gov.br/tv-aovivo.php
"Wild Speculation is Sin" (tags)
"Marx recognized the core of globalization as a globalization of capital..He also warned against the economization of all areas of life..A capitalism without ethical and legal frameworks is misanthropic..The social market economy is a civilization product.."
533 JOBS LOST IN NOVEMBER, the MOST IN 30 YEARS (tags)
Labor Department statistics show that U.S. employers have cut 1.2 million jobs in the last three months. 'This was much worse than was expected,' one analyst says.
Obama's Economic Dream Team? (tags)
indeed for Wall Street bankers
"Like the Fall of the Wall" (Joseph Stiglitz) (tags)
The mixture of low interests, excessive liquidity and lax oversight on money institutes led to the financial crisis. National indebtedness rose two-thirds in only eight years. The govt should immediately begin investing in the infrastructure, education and other projects.
Financial Crisis: Bending and Breaking (tags)
The governments still strike the pose of successful crisis management. The points are set for a state-sanctioned survival of neoliberlaism through bending and breaking, Instead of raising mass income, the state finances capital investments to liven up the domestic economy.
Holy Scripture is the Standard, not Capitalism (tags)
Describing the dominant system as a social market economy is a deception. Social justice should be the integrating element of our economic order. Justice is not something additional to faith in God. Trust in the invisible hand is the core of the religion of the market.
International WShappens December the 6th to the 11th (tags)
We want a debate not from the perspective of the market because the market heralds resolved now that they will make the solution for what themselves caused, with their bad conduction of economic policy
The Financial Crisis in Biblical and Theological Perspective (tags)
The owners of capital started to create a bubble in the financial markets through various kinds of speculation in order to drive up the returns by derivatives, options etc, creating Casino Capitalism, de-linked from the real economy.
The economy elected Barack Obama President, and it will make or break his administration. Right now it seems likely to break it, as Obama's announced appointees to staff his government come almost exclusively from the moderate administration of Bill Clinton, thereby assuring the ruling class that "change you can believe in" means "change the rich and powerful won't have to worry about." Without a mass Left movement on the order of the socialists and communists who in the 1930's pushed Franklin Roosevelt to the Left, Obama's Presidency is likely to be yet another suck-up to corporate America and its anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-worker "free trade" agenda.
Bush and Cheney wore the flag to appear patriotic. (tags)
Obama does not need to follow.
Bankruptcy of the Last Utopia (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-realization. The economy should serve humankind; humanity should not serve bankers, SUVs and sports stadiums. The same Chinese letter represents crisis & opportunity.Will future be more human?
Rich of the World, Enrich Yourselves! (tags)
Financial jugglers speculating with food, oil and other raw materials caused double-digit inflation and made staple foods like rice and wheat into luxury items for millions. Neoliberalism with one blow managed to drive nation states to the defensive.
Financial Injections Ensure the Assets of the Rich (tags)
The money must be taken from those who profited from the past financial system. Thus a tax reform must be on the agenda. A state investment program is also urgently necessary. The past growth model of global capitalism is in a structural crisis. A new economy is beyond profit.
Obama and the Crisis of Expectation (tags)
With Obama elected President but not yet inaugurated, the question on everyone’s mind is, “what’s going to happen next?” Millions of people around the world are hoping that a Obama presidency will radically change the course of US politics, and with it, world politics. This is especially true for the huge numbers of mostly young volunteers working for Obama’s campaign, most of whom had never been involved in politics before. And while it is impossible to predict the future precisely, one can make an educated guess as to Obama’s future actions, based on answering two fundamental questions: which social class is Obama and the Democratic Party going to represent while in office, and what are the current interests of that class. For example, if Obama were to act in the interests of the working class, a number of measures would be immediately taken, such as increasing wages, improving healthcare, funding schools, ending war, etc. If, on the other hand, Obama is going to represent the ruling class, we can expect policies similar to the Bush Presidency, who long ago proved himself to be a puppet for the banks and corporations.
Racism, Immigration, and Profit (tags)
People are rightly confused about the issue of immigration -- it is a complex phenomenon and many things need to be considered. Often times, there seem to be equally compelling arguments and statistics on either side of the issue, creating even more confusion. Unfortunately, the immigration debate is often tinged or even marred by racism - usually subtly, sometimes openly. This feeling finds a receptive audience not because of prejudice, but out of fear. Indeed, racism cannot exist without fear. We believe that, at bottom, recent immigration-related topics -- from ballot measures to border fences -- directly or indirectly contain elements of racism and fear. Unraveling the basis for this fear, as well as those in charge of creating it, is essential if one is to make an informed decision on the immigration question. While doing this, we will attempt to uncover the deeper reasons that have created the atmosphere that has projected this issue on to center stage.
Welcome to Finance Market Capitalism (tags)
The financial market escapades must be the problem because capitalism itself cannot be the problem. The state bailout measure prepares the ground for inflationary developments.
This profit motive system based on material wealth has degraded us to selfish, greedy rulers of a global economy that we helped to create and have now plunged it into the unavoidable world depression of the 21st century. The scenario of the boom bust capitalist system is antiquated and needs to be replaced.
Social Contract and the Emergency Hour (tags)
The financial crisis is also an opportunity to reflect on our priorities and perspectives. Elite consciousness is a frozen consciousness where there are not alternatives and bankruptcy are only normal business practices.
Greed is the Nature of the System (tags)
Politics was corrupted byt he economy and lost control to the economy. In the private enterprise system, there are too many incentives that oppose the public interest. When company pensions end, workers speculate. When high profits are the norm, companies speculate.
What the Economic Crisis Means for Us and How to Defend Ourselves (tags)
Gloom and Doom-----The pillars of the U.S. capitalist economy are crumbling and falling all around us while the federal government frantically races from one crisis to another, throwing money at them as if throwing water on a fire. It could well turn out that the money represents only a few drops of water thrown on threatening flames that will soon billow into an out-of-control wildfire so that nothing President-elect Barak Obama has proposed will succeed in averting the disaster.
The Age of Austerity Dawns (tags)
The burst bubble of the New Economy should have been understood as a warning. Then as today, wishful thinking and greed blocked the view to reality. Recessions offer a period of welcome recovery. Losing the hectic turbo-capitalism is not really a great loss.
PHILIPPINES: Labor export policy is anti-women, anti-development (tags)
MANILA, Philippines – The country should not take pride in being the model in terms of labor migration, according to women’s groups who are engaging the Second Global Forum on Migration on Development (GFMD).
The Grand Illusion-Mega-Bubble World Economy (tags)
Self-righteousness is really the grand illusion. The global North consumes the resources of the global South. We are literally devouring the future. Given resource scarcity and climate change, the world economy as a whole is a bubble economy, a monstrous bet on an impossible future.
WA: Wells Fargo Attacked In Solidarity With Detainees (tags)
do something
NYCLAW ANTIWAR DIGEST -- PALESTINE FOCUS (tags)
The Palestinian cause is the right of return for all refugees and nothing less.
Will The Next Government Tax Rebate/Economic Stimulus be a Windfall for Gambling Casinos? (tags)
Would it be more prudent next time “U.S. Government Tax Stimulus Rebates” be “government vouchers” that can only be used to pay for food, housing, utilities, medical bills, e.g., important primary needs?
Growing financial crisis.
"The Financial Crisis has made Heroes out of Rogues" (tags)
The state should make the economy more social and democratic. The conversions of Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Peter Steinbruick from market fetishism to state optimism were cabaret-style conversions. Democracy should dominate the economy.
Past sins are coming home to roost.
Capitalism changed into "finance-driven" capitalism. The profit rates for industrial capital fell in the past decades. Washington could be paralyzed under the debt yoke like Japan in the early 1990s. After decades of market idolization, the US has rediscovered political power.
V.P. Candidate Alexander: U.S. Economy is Beyond Recession (tags)
Socialist Vice Presidential Candidate Stewart A. Alexander says the measures that are being taken by the Fed, in the midst of this growing economic crisis is an indication that the U.S. economy has now passed the stage of a recession and is now in the early stage of a depression. “It will take more than printing truck loads money and bailing out the capitalists to prevent the U.S. and global economy from slipping into a deeper depression.”
Lee Sustar explains that the mayhem in the markets this week is symptomatic of a deeper crisis--and the leaders of the most powerful governments aren't sure what to do.
PANIC DECLARED Empty store shelves, gas pumps, ATMs ahead. (tags)
Who am I to declare a panic? Don't worry about that yet; just stock up on a little cash and canned goods. When everything the feds do JUST MAKES THINGS WORSE -- we are in a panic. Not just grandpa's Depression, but a good old-fashioned running-scared panic when the shelves go bare ...
"We are in an epoch shift" (tags)
Free markets became wild markets. The post-socialist blessing became the turbo-capitalist curse. The state allowed the monitoring of banks to be de facto privatized. Politics allowed the markets to run wild. In turbo-capitalism, contracting debts was trendy and saving was Philistine.
California Proposition 7: Redefining Renewable Energy to Concentrate Power (tags)
The control of scarce resources is a time-tested method of concentrating wealth and power. Although renewable energy resources are not scarce, the paradigm shift in public understanding about the fundamental differences between renewables and fossil fuels is only beginning. By subsidizing the building massive permanent infrastructure to control the collection and distribution of renewable energy, Proposition 7 will starve investment in distributed renewables needed to democratize the energy economy. Meanwhile, that centralized, permanent infrastructure will provide profit centers for a few corporations at the expense of everyone else.
He is racist, erratic, confused and a poseur who knows nothing about the economy.
The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization (tags)
The capitalist world economy follows ananti-social logic. The replacement of neoliberalism is necessitated by a cyclical swing. Will the world economy return to a balance or sink in violent chaos? Wallerstein's article could stimulate fruitful academic and political discussions.
America where are the patriots? (tags)
The bailout is part of the overall scheme by those in power who are directing events for an outcome of their choosing. It is the handful of individuals who some refer to as "The Illuminati." This elite group of powerful people has been creating and directing events in America and world Society ever since Colonial Days and in modern times as well.
The U.S. Economy on FIRE (tags)
The current U.S. economic crisis didn't start a few years ago when banks and financial institutions started selling "subprime" real estate loans to high-risk borrowers and then repackaging them as "mortgage-backed securities." It began in the early 1970's as a result of a long-term plan by America's major corporations and business leaders to drive down workers' wages and extract more surplus value — and the workers' response, which was to take on more debt. Any real solution that benefits working people cannot be instituted until the power of the corporate rich over the political system is broken.
The Future as Possibility: Elmar Altvater (tags)
The state should not be a trough for the super-wealthy. Representatives representing money and not the people are marionettes of a corrupt campaign financing system. The system must be changed if it is to survive. Call Congress 1-800-270-0309.
"Just Say No!" to the Robin Hood-in-Reverse Bailout (tags)
How people can stand up to threats on the economy by Wall Street banking/securities corporations, where are alternatives to save the economy that don't involve theft of taxpayer dollars??
The government-business looting of America.
Political Economy of the Financial Markets (tags)
Financial markets are not described here as anonymous zones of self-regulation but as instruments of private actors enforcing their own business interests on state institutions. Structural deficits cause the crises, e.g.massive liquidity.
The Bush B.S. 700 Billion Bail Out Plan, or, "Let THEM FALL!" (tags)
This is my commentary on the current situation of the fear tactics being used by the current adminstration to attempt to "cow-down" the American public that each and every American Family MUST cough up $10,300.00 EACH to bail out the American Economy.
NO TO BUSH-PELOSI BAILOUT OF WALL STREET GREED! TIME FOR PEOPLE’S ACTION AND REAL CHANGE! (tags)
The Bush-Pelosi proposed law bailing out Wall Street capitalist greed and hyper-profit,will hit the American poor and middle class even harder, and prolong the crisis. Time to stop the bill! Time to change Wall Street-coddling politicians! Time to go into the streets and make the people's voice heard!
Bush....an economic terrorist
Why Socialism? (by Albert Einstein) (tags)
This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949).
Urgent! Sign Bernie Sander's bailout alternative petition! Let the wealthy pay! (tags)
Please sign this petition from Bernie Sanders which outlines an alternative proposal to the Wall Street financial bailout, which taxes the wealthy rather than ordinary working Americans! Please forward and tell your friends! Thank you!! :-)
Bail-Out, Economic Democracy and the Socialist Path (tags)
David Schweickart, political philosopher, discusses the financial crisis, what it exposes about capitalism, how it can set the stage for economic democracy, and open the socialist path.
Changing the Rules to Keep the Ruling Class in the Drivers Seat (tags)
A better solution would be to cancel all debts.
V.P. Candidate Alexander: Fed Rescue Plan a Temporary Fix (tags)
Vice Presidential Candidate Stewart A. Alexander, says the $700 billion rescue plan is only a temporary fix for an economy with many fractures. “The root cause of the U.S. economic crisis is the system, capitalism; and every 75 years a new bailout plan becomes necessary.”
The Angels on the Economy by Doreen Virtue (tags)
Economic conditions are more affected by human beliefs and expectations, than by oil prices or political concerns. This is true for you personally, as well as for everyone globally. Your personal finances are greatly influenced by your expectations and emotions
... Fiscal paradises are prospering; people are suffering. Is this how humanity’s well-being can be guaranteed?
Reviewing Danny Schechter's "Plunder" (tags)
A masterful account of the subcrime crisis.
Nationalization of Freddie Mac (tags)
The Nationalization of the mortage industry by the government shows how easily the goverment can nationalize healthcare and other services. The steady now increased offensive by the bosses over the past 30 years is because of a failure of union leadership by throwing all their resources into funding the Democrats and supporting the "team" concept.
Biblical Sabbath Economy (tags)
Franz Segbers insists the Biblical Sabbath economy cares for the oikos, not speculation and accumulation When the right of speculation trumps the right of housing, we end up protecting the sharks from the sardines (cf "Housing as a Human Right")
International Internet Traffic Now Being Routed Around the United States (tags)
The International Internet Community is Voluntarily Routing Traffic Around the United States, as a direct result of the Bush Administrations Patriot Act.
Growth and Social Justice: Joseph Stiglitz (tags)
The trickle-down economy does not function. The left understands the market and rhe role the market can and should play in the economy. The right doesn't understand either. The Bush administration is nothing but the old corporatism in a new garment.
De-Acceleration or Globalization 2.0 (tags)
"The wondrous global division of labor came about in which threshold countries lend money to the US to buy Chinese or Indian products..Must cut-flowers from Africa be promoted in Europe?..With de-acceleration, globalization will catapult fewer jobs around the globe.
A cataclysmic financial storm is about to bring down U.S. economy (tags)
"This phenomenon is a growing threat to the national security and sovereignty of the US. The hundreds of billions of dollars caught up as windfall profit for Arab Islamic oil barons is soon to be used to buy distressed and foreclosed property from the very Americans that the run up in oil has exploited."
Uncoupling Happiness and Consumption (tags)
The promised happiness is not possible through more and more consumption. We tinker with a reality-construction, a "reality of the second order" that represses the "reality of the first order." The "good life" can be very well organized.
The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis (tags)
The stock market- and real estate-bubble occur in advanced capitalism. The government response was to create a second bubble, the great bubble transfer. The real estate bubble crashed last summer. John Bellamy Foster teaches at the University of Oregon and is editor of Monthly Review.
William Greider Raps Predatory Usury Schemes (tags)
How did the country get into this unholy financial mess? Think usury! Acclaimed author William Greider points the finger at banks, and people of great wealth, “taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to fail.” He blames others, too, like “The Fed,” under the reign of Alan Greenspan, the U.S. Congress, and Wall Street. Mr. Greider charges that these parties worked to “castrate” the watchdogs.
Conservation, Conservation, Conservation! (tags)
We have lost our consumer control to the corporate dictatorships.
Monetary Policy and Stagflation (tags)
50 countries already show double-digit rates; 42% of the world population is affected. Monetary policy reacts helplessly to stagflation. The financial bubble economy is an excess. When consumers finally spend the money they don't have, everything will be just fine.
The Great Ruin by Joseph Stiglitz (tags)
The war has destroyed the economy, society and sovereignty of the country. The economic misery is only an integral element of the general debacle. Paul Bremer issued laws abolishing import duties and lowering corporate taxes. Privatizing state enterprises violated Hague Convention of 1902.
Stiglitz on McCain: If He Doesn't Understand the Economy, He Doesn't Understand Security (tags)
"If we had infinite resources, we might be able to have perfect security. But America, like every other country, has resource constraints. That means you need to be smart-that is, economic-about the money we spend."
The Forgotten Priority of Labor Over Capital (tags)
Politics is responsible for a social market economy and its rules and structures. When the state is reduced to only setting the framework for competition and then appeals to the responsibility of individual entrepreneurs, one falls at once in a neoliberal trap.
Prison and Drug Economy Expert Catherine Austin Fitts on UhuruRadio.com (tags)
Inner Workings of the Parasitic Economy This week on Solidarity Not Charity Penny Hess will interview Catherine Austin Fitts, former Wall Street investment banker and Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush.
Without Ethics the Economy Runs into the Wall (tags)
Only 27% of Germans think the population benefits when business does well. Only 40% believe the economy and the population sit in the same boat. With tendencies to screen itself socially and give priority to its own goals, the economy loses the important capital of trust.
Alexander Dismisses Economic Plans of Obama and McCain (tags)
There is no easy fix for the ailing U.S. economy, and Barack Obama and John McCain are not prepared to make the necessary changes that will protect the interests of working people. Comparing the economic plans of the two candidates, it does not matter whether McCain or Obama is elected in the 2008 Election; the economic programs that have been outlined by both candidates will only produce minor differences to the present Bush White House.
Fannie, Freddie, Food and Fuel (tags)
The financial crisis deepens with the nationalization of IndyMac and the likely bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie May by the US taxpayer. The financial crisis has company as inflation, and in particular huge increases in global food and energy prices, enters the fray. The American economic model has been discredited and the American century has lasted but a few decades. These developments have and will further open up a new period in the struggle between capital and labor on the world stage and the US working class will have a major role to play as it re-connects with its militant traditions.
System criticism is often repressed. Private vice does not bring public virtue. Everyone pursuing self-interest does not usher in public welfare. Inequality, growth, competition and market fundamentalism are not panaceas or inevitabilities but false securities.
Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."
Robert McChesney's The Political Economy of Media - Part I (tags)
Another McChesney tour de force.
The Time is Ripe: Democratic Controls of the Financial Markets! (tags)
Like the melting of the dollar, the energy, food and housing crises have systemic roots, the logic and dynamic of maximum profit.. The US is experiencing a "margin call." The world wants its money back. The economy and the financial markets should serve people, not vice versa.
Crisis Populism and Rose-Colored Glasses (tags)
When it concerns socializing the losses of the financial disaster, the head of Deutsche Bank no longer believes in the "self-healing power of the market." The bankruptcy of neoliberalism is blatant.
"Oil Crisis Changes Globalization" (tags)
In the poorest hundred countries, the high oil price is intensifying hunger and poverty. "These people stand at the edge of a possible disaster," Jeremy Rifkin says. The high prices for oil, gasoline and gas change the rules of globalization.
Deregulated Markets and Alternative Economics (tags)
In the last ten years there was more speculationthan ever, more than before the 1930 worldwide economic crisis. A policy of deregulated financial markets made this possible. That real investment profits turn out relatively small encourages the speculation tendency.
Working people relying on stimulus checks, coins and lotto (tags)
The platforms of the Socialist Party USA and Peace and Freedom Party outline fundamental approaches that will promote economic policy that will benefit working people. Both socialist parties are rejecting the economic strategies of the Democrats, Republicans, and their candidates; advancing U.S. imperialism and waging war is not the answer for our economy that is now in economic free fall.
How Speculators Are Causing the Cost of Living to Skyrocket (tags)
Speculation results in preposterous exaggerations, with real consequences for the economy. The excesses of financial markets are sending the world economy into convulsions. The financial markets have developed into a "monster" that needs to be tamed (Horst Kohler).
Potential Future Hyperinflation (tags)
Potential economic trouble ahead.
U.S. Economy doing well? Think again. (tags)
Hold on to your shorts and wallets!
Work and Work Moralists (tags)
The machine offers less and less work to more and more people. The person of the work-based society believes only work can give meaning to life. Redefining work, security, health and strength is imperative for civilization to triumph over barbarism
Game of Deceived Deceivers (tags)
The worldwide game with fictional assets has a few winners and many losers. Who has deceived whom in the game of deceived deceivers is hardly clear. The world econmy is too important to be left to gamblers. We need far more than a few new surveillance cameras and watchmen in the casino
Robert Reich's "Super-Capitalism: How the Economy Undermines Democracy" (tags)
When everyone talks about stocks and consumption, what happens to social responsibility and public welfare? We suffer under a schizophrenia. The consumer in us opposes the worker. Businesses cannot be socially-responsible because they serve only one goal-maximization of profit.
Farewell to Neoliberalism (tags)
State interventions in the economy are unpopular and generally regarded as "against the system"-when the state interferes in profiteering. In the case of a crisis, the losses should be socialized.
Socialists: Working people don’t need stimulus checks (tags)
The recent action taken by President Bush and the Feds, to reduce the time that 130 million Americans will need to wait before receiving their welfare checks, is another indication of the critical state the U.S. economy is now experiencing. Socialists believe it is necessary to create good paying jobs for working people rather than mailing millions of people a one time welfare check. Socialists have called for higher minimum wages and developing socially useful jobs for all working people.
Thousands Marched Through Downtown Milwaukee (tags)
Protesters want a fair and just immigration reform bill passed within the first 100 days of the next President’s term
Israel Told to Tackle West Bank Plight (tags)
Israel is under concerted international pressure to give swift agreement to specific measures to improve Palestinian life. Israel is criticized for not doing more to boost the Palestinian economy.
"The workers who have to sell themselves bit by bit are a commodity like every other commercial article." This quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto is an accurate description of the current system which is morally sick and lacks consensus.
The greatest risks threaten through the crisis of the financial system, through further price increases for food, the sensitivity of global supply routes and the increasingly expensive sources of energy. 2008 could develop into a worldwide crisis year.
71% see themselves as poor or very poor, says Pulse Asia poll (tags)
Around two of every three Filipinos believe that the national economy is worse than it was three years ago, the latest Pulse Asia survey showed. The survey results were released Monday. The Pulse Asia survey also showed that around three of every four Filipinos consider themselves as very poor or poor.
The Legal Criminality of Finance Capitalism (tags)
The market mechanism, the Keynesians say, is not efficient or balanced. Charles Ponzi was one of the greatest swindlers of American history. Instead of the capitalist economy holding the strings of politics, politics could use economic power to create new realities.
Psychology has a great influence on developments of the world econmy. In Tokyo, the G7 states agreed to avoid negative terms to not worsen the situation. Neither the extreme price drop of the dollar nor of the Yen were mentioned in the final declaration.
The Rescuers of Capitalism (tags)
Banks all over the world bought these speculative objects through subsidiaries called "special conduits" that did not appear on the official balance sheets. The mortal sins of the economy are the specualtive practices, not state interventions.
Federal Tax Relief Vanishing at Pumps (tags)
Senators Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain are rehashing the old political rhetoric that the Democrats and Republicans have coined to win elections every four years. However, in 2008, working people are searching for real solutions to complex issues; ending the Iraq War and dealing with a global industry that is beyond the control of the Democrats, Republicans or their candidates.
Attac Germany on the Subprime Crisis (tags)
The crisis can't be solved with a few surveillance cameras in the global casino. The party was quickily over when the real estate prices stopped soaring. Investors are often guided by a herd behavior. Sustainable economy should have a prioirity over short-term profits.
Inequality and Equal Opportunity: A German Perspective (tags)
A fifth of Germans no longer believe the national economy is just. With false signals, false promises and false goals, politics kindles the feeling of injustice. The idea of equal opportunity turns out to be the grand delusion of Germany.
A whole manager generation will have to be retrained or change its ideas. Life is measured in money by such people becaused they learned this as the ultimate truth in their training, not because they are immoral or amoral. Countries that once amassed dollars to buy oil are now unloading dollars to diversity their holdings.
The Crisis of Speculative Capitalism (tags)
Since the end of July 2007, the world economy was shocked by a new severe crisis of the financial markets. The courage to regulate the financial markets to prevent a future uncoupling from the productive economy is still obviously absent. The hour of truth will inevitably come.
Phase of collapse of US real economy (tags)
It is neither a “remake” of the 1929 crisis nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises or 1987 stock market crisis. It is truly a global systemic crisis, that is to say a crisis affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organised in the last decades.
The Republican Candidate (4 and 5) (tags)
If this is a subject of interest to you, in the United States today there are five Cuban prisoners, separated one from the other by thousands of miles. They have no area that can be sarcastically called the “Hanoi Hilton”. Their suffering and the injustice of which they are victims will be known the world over; don't doubt it for a minute
A Will for Change: New Economic Thinking (tags)
Since economic thinking shapes the world, we can't leave economists alone to putter with their theories. Too many of them hung up their thinking caps the moment they got their degrees, and stopped looking out the window.
The Subprime Tsunami Reaches the EU (tags)
Subprime mortgage credits in the US should not have been issued. Nevertheless subprime credits were extended in the volume of $1.3 trillion. An avalanche of expropriation roars in the valley. The banking crisis spills over into the credit system in the real economy.
The US Will Experience Its Big Surprise (tags)
The dollar devaluation has to do with many things, above all with the double deficit. The US must become indebted more and more. China and Dubai could go on a shopping spree and buy oil companies. The US must earn euros to pay for the oil to be imported.
Building Bridges: Foreclosed: The State of the Dream (tags)
Building Bridges: Your Community Labor Report - National Edition Produced by Ken Nash & Mimi Rosenberg *************************
Dislocations and Crises (tags)
Liberalization of the finance markets started a mechanism where the broad mass of the world's population lost. Only a few conglomerates and wealthy persons are winners.
The End of Capitalism As We Know It: Book Review (tags)
Capitalism needs a pension. The time for a dissolution of the historical phenomenon of this special economic form is overdue. The good old capitalism now appears as a development-brake and catastrophe-accelerator because monopolies are impractical and inflexible.
Socialists: Feds Offering Little for U.S. Economic Recovery (tags)
It is extremely unlikely that working people will benefit from the economic package presented by President Bush; millions of working people are presently behind on house payments, auto payments and are finding it difficult to pay monthly bills, including the cost for food, gas and fuel for home heating. Today, a majority of working class people are living from check to check and are struggling to keep up with the cost of living.
COLLAPSE OF THE US DOLLAR (tags)
Imagine being sent forward in time from 1967 to 2007. Instead of gas costing 25 cents a gallon, it's $2.50. A decent home, intead of costing $15,000, costs $250,000 or more.
Joma Sison slams Arroyo for lying about the economic situation (tags)
Prof. Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, slammed Gloria M. Arroyo for lying about the Philippine economic situation by claiming that she is propelling the Philippines to become a “first world country”. Prof. Sison declared, “In utter subservience to the US-dictated policy of “neoliberal” glob” alization, she has worked against the line of national industrialization and genuine land reform and has aggravated and deepened the agrarian, pre-industrial and semi-feudal character of the Philippine economy. She has worsened the backward and impoverished “third world” conditions of the Philippines.
Arroyo's bankrupt and deceptive economic policy (tags)
Gloria M. Arroyo, the fake president, keeps on babbling that her regime is propelling the Philippines to become a "first world country". She is obviously lying.
Interview with Kurt Richebacher (tags)
"The dangers that loom on the currency front are immense. The US trade deficit and the accumulated foreign indebtedness have reached a scale that defies any possible action by central banks." Dr. Richebacher is a former economist of the Dresden Bank.
Morgan Stanley Issues Full US Recession Alert (tags)
Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy, warning of a sharp slowdown in business investments and a perfect storm for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Under the conservative definition, man is the servant of money. Long live alternative economics!
The Dollar and US Hegemony (tags)
The dollar devaluation since 2001 is a necessary adjustment for the twin US deficits, the national budget deficit and the foreign trade deficit. US imports are nearly double US exports. A drastic change of lifestyles is imperative where modesty and simplicity are encouraged.
Another Economy is Possible (tags)
The world economy increasingly has the character of a plutonomy, a wealth economy where the rich appropriate an ever larger share of the social wealth. Imagine an economy that serves justice, peace and creation, where competition and cooperation coexist and the future is safeguarded
Venezuela: The economic tug of war between revolution and counter-revolution (tags)
A recent report from Datanalisis (1) [the Venezuelan statistical service] revealed what already many people knew and suffered from. Scarcity of basic foodstuff is becoming intolerable. This study established that milk, beef and sugar have become very difficult to find. Other products like chicken, cooking oil, cheese, sardines and black beans are also very scarce. The analysts who compiled the report interviewed 800 people in some 60 different shops, supermarkets and markets, both in the private sector and the public distribution network, Mercal. 73,3% of the places visited had no milk powder for sale. 51,7% no longer had refined sugar, 40% had no cooking oil, and 26,7% no black beans, a basic staple in Venezuela. Two thirds of the shoppers declared that they experienced food scarcity to one degree or another in the shops where they usually buy. Queues of a few hours, sometimes up to four hours, to buy some milk are no longer the exception. This is reminiscent of the situation in Chile when wholesale economic sabotage was used against the left-wing Popular Unity government of the 1970s. Without giving in to the panic stories and exaggerated reports of the right-wing media, we must understand that this is a serious situation. The bosses have even threatened to extend this situation into the first quarter of 2008, especially because of the uncertainties related to the questions of private property included in the new constitutional reform. They are grabbing the revolution by its throat.
11/22/63 44 Years since CIA Murdered Pres Kennedy (tags)
The assassination of President John Kennedy by the arm of the ruling class known as the CIA on November 22, 1963 accelerated the imperialist war against Vietnam and the destruction of the American economy, just as the 9/11 Inside Job was the excuse to perpetrate war and fascism, also destroying the American economy, all to make the rich richer.
Criticism of Neoliberalism: Book Review (tags)
The neoliberal understanding of freedom restricts the possibilities of individuals to participation in the market. Structural and economic power are faded out.
Reforms and the System Question (tags)
According to Marxist perspectives, capitalism develops with crises and ruptures. Possibilities of revolutionary social upheavals open up in these crises. The old wisdom of the Fordist age that cars cannot buy cars has lost all value to the elites.
A Hundred and Fifty Years Later and Marx Still Prevails (tags)
Marx Was Right But Don’t Tell Them
Social Economies and Political Conflicts (tags)
Most of our serious social, ecological and economic problems can only be solved bottom-up with the insight and will of concerned citizens. The challenge consists in a radical democratization of the economy. Otherwise we put the cart before the horse and bridle the horse by the tail.
"The Dollar Will Fall Enormously" (tags)
The American balance of payments deficit must be reduced. Today's business model is dead. Moody's rating agency will be the Arthur Andersen of this decade.
Questions to the Maestro Alan Greenspan (tags)
Listen to Thom Hartmann interview Alan Greenspan on Air America Monday Sept 24. Greenspan was responsible tor the credit problems that now shake the world finance markets. Did the maestro drastically lower interest rates to help the Bush administration?
New land of opportunity (tags)
Los Cabos rises as place to realize the Mexican dream
Stock Market Meltdown - First Signs of Global Economic Rout
Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization (tags)
Refusing to work out historical sins like colonialism, fascism and apartheid repeats the historical model of conquest, domination and exclusion. Kairos Europe is directed against a system and its structures. Its positive goal sets life and people in first place.
Really Really Free Market (tags)
Santa Barbara's 3rd Really Really Free Market draws in the community to participate in an experimental alternative economy based on gift giving and mutual aid.
Gloria Arroyo’s Economy: NOT WORKING (tags)
Today, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo will again address the Congress to give a report on the achievements of her government, and at the same time express her primary focus for the next year. As she did during her previous State of the Nation Address (SONA) speeches, she may yet again boast the economic feats of her administration, including the strengthening of the peso and the recent booming of the stock market.
Philippines: On Mrs. Arroyo’s 7th State of the Nation Address (tags)
"Gloria's economy is not working." This is what the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said of Mrs. Arroyo's flamboyant and rosy economic claims; two days shy from the Executive's 7th State of the Nation Address (SONA) this 23rd of July.
The Economy of Bread Allone and the Economy of Enough (tags)
Jesus' discipleship demands seeing through the economy of bread alone or structural egoism and not submitting.. The economy of bread alone, the economy of hoarding and riches of a few costs the soul and freedom.
Vitter denies prostitution accusations (tags)
Vitter denies prostitution accusations
“Green” capitalism: German Greens adopt new economic programme (tags)
Germany’s Green Party recently agreed to a new economic programme, published under the title “The Green free-market economy.” The programme paper was developed by prominent party figures under the auspices of the party’s parliamentary faction leader Fritz Kuhn, heralding the free market as the guardian angel of the environment—and their own wallets. Every line of this document reflects the class outlook of the upper middle class—those owning medium-sized businesses and the better-off self-employed—by glorifying the market and private property, while simultaneously expressing the authors’ fear of mounting social inequalities. The entire document is characterised by a continuous “on the one hand...and on the other hand” type of argument.
Competition and the Legal System (tags)
Competition is not always a fountain of economic development..Certain academic findings are dangerous for the functioning of norm systems. The critic becomes the delinquent. Several wicked mosquitos may be criticized, not mosquitos in general.
Privatization as a Threat (tags)
Privatization undermines the nature of the state, the state's reason to exist, and leads to the loss of identity and sovereignty. The state revenue side is weakened by privatizing profitable state expenses. Siegfried Bross is a judge on the German Constitutional Court.
The Underrated Power of Economists (tags)
During the Great Depression between the two world wars, the Brit John Maynard Keynes came to an insight that was implemented in the 1960s. The state must guide the economy by its spending to avert the danger of depression.
The end of oil Documentary, RTE, Irelands National Media Provider, while talking about the price of oil, fails again to inform the public about the real cost involved
Building Bridges Radio:NYC Residential Construction: This is What the Bottom Looks Like (tags)
WBAI's Buiding Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report presents this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON WEB LINKE
Homo Oeconomicus and Economic Theories (tags)
The neoclassical theory dominant today is different from the Keynesian theory that defined the decades after the 2nd World War. "Bad ideas flourish because theya re in the interest of powerful groups." (Paul Krugman)
REPORT ON THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE PHILIPPINES (tags)
Interview of Filipino Activist Intellectual E. SAN JUAN, Jr.
"We Have an Upper Class Problem" (tags)
The unconditional basic income is a revolutionary idea but can only be realized in an evolutionary way.. We have long been in a foreign-provision economy. No one can provide for himself.. The state should offer people a basic income so they can live a modest humane life.
Building Bridges Radio: India's Economy - The Real Story (tags)
WBAI's Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report presents this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON WEB LINK BELOW
Democracy and its Enemy, Capitalist Globalization (tags)
The core problem of globalization is the dismantling of democracy. The elected are without power and those with power are not elected. The bonds between the generations burst. An absolute amoral individualism dominates in the most progressive states of capitalism.
Web 2.0 Promotes Narcissism (tags)
"Young persons born after 1982 are the most narcissistic generation of recent history and far removed from a social orientation.. Narcissism is a business or income in the attention economy.
US Locomotive Losing Steam (tags)
In 2006 after the crash of the New Economy boom, we are again witnessing irrational excess in the credit system and in the prices of assets and property titles.
De-industrialization reduces the long-term wealth-formation of broad sectors of the population. An extremely high indebtedness of private households also contributes to the disastrous total deficit of the US.
Global Social Rights versus Neoliberalism (tags)
Building community centers, limiting the power of corporations and reflecting on a basic citizen income are steps to democratization and a positive public spirit.
Brazil: The "brake" is COPOM. (tags)
The logic of the the Growth Acceleration Program opposes classic economists as Michael Kalecki and John Keynes. The GAP that does not contain a expansionist monetary politics is not the GAP, is the anti-GAP, as, by the way, the last act of the Copom made clear.
Cheney’s speech at Sydney’s Shangri-la Hotel (tags)
The American Vice-President, Dick Cheney, today delivered his only address to the ‘public’ at the plush Shangri-la Hotel. He will later meet with the servile Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson and other minor government officials at Victoria Barracks, Paddington. The symbolism of Cheney’s visit in the last days of neo-conservative rule is not lost on Australians; the absence of the Prime Minster, John Howard, from the venue was the most notable aspect of the event!
Full Speed Against the Wind (tags)
"Whoever believes in continous growth in a finite world is either mad or an economist." (Kenneth E. Boulding)
Capitalism and Corruption (tags)
Until recently, the bribes paid by German firms abroad were deducted from the corpor-ation tax as operating expenses..The neoliberal dogma doesnt need any religion since it makes capitalism into a religion.. The cult of abstract riches cannot replace morality Mergers and takeovers are central.
Brazil: Henrique Meirelles faces de tornado at CBB. (tags)
Lula prefers that Meirelles stays but syntonized with him. The PT prefers to see Meirelles out. In the absence of Palocci, he guaranteed the depressive growth of the economy in the the last four years.
Optimism in the Kingdom of Phantasies (tags)
The credit-financing of the worldwide takeover batlles has built a gigantic bankrupt-cy potential in the private equity funds that can lead to a chain reaction in 2007. The hard landing of the consumer economy in the US seems programmed.
Boycott All UFPJ and IA Activities (tags)
This weekend's so-called peace rally in Washington D.C. will simply amount to aa enormous waste of time
Growth in justice, opportunity and environ-mental caring requires identifying blind spots and abandoning myths. Economists must learn to subtract. The state must control the market so everybody shares in wealth and increased productivity.
Christian Morality and Economic Reason (tags)
Finance capital circling anonymously around the globe seeking only short-term profit must expect the resistance of the affected and of the church that turns to the affected. The question is who profits from globalization.
Congress on Solidarity Economy (tags)
Solidarity economy is part of a strategy against neoliberal exactions. Economic self-help must not be used as a social fig leaf for the continued neoliberal reorganization of society.
Theologians of the Market Economy (tags)
Mandeville's thesis that private vices often change inadvertently into collective virtues as a bee collaborates in building a beehive is a literary construction. The market in Smith's explanation is nothing but a religious paradox.
NGO of the Week: Basic Income Network (tags)
The internationally practiced social cuts sold as combating unemployment have terrible social and economic effects. A grave psychic depression has already seized society. Since the world economy becomes ever more efficient, what will become of 80% w/o work?
Wartime military spending fuels economy (tags)
War is good for the military police state? Well good for the people that supply the military war machine!
The critical fight today is against those who kill, maim, exploit and destroy the natural world. This is the fight of my/our lives; to lose this fight is to lose them all. Resist, oppose, and fight against those who would kill and destroy for personal gain and money. Our values are the enduring real values of life, clean air, water, food and a sustainable world for our children to inherit. Economic rationalism is the enemy of everything that is natural and balanced – economy is another word for catastrophe! Those who continue to espouse antiquated economic formulas of death, greed and destruction are those devoid of vision, the hollow people who cleave to redundant formulas that have clearly failed. They cling desperately to their ‘holy’ books in a futile effort to locate meaning for their failed vacuous existences.
...
In one of many reports and accounts of economic life in the Gaza Strip that I have recently read, I was struck by a description of an old man standing on the beach in Gaza throwing his oranges into the sea. The description leapt out at me because it was this very same scene I myself witnessed some 21 years ago during my very first visit to the territory. It was the summer of 1985 and I was taken on a tour of Gaza by a friend named Alya. As we drove along Gaza's coastal road I saw an elderly Palestinian man standing at the shoreline with some boxes of oranges next to him. I was puzzled by this and asked Alya to stop the car. One by one, the elderly Palestinian took an orange and threw it into the water. His was not an action of playfulness but of pain and regret. His movements were slow and labored as if the weight of each orange was more than he could bear. I asked my friend why he was doing this and she explained that he was prevented from exporting his oranges to Israel and rather than watch them rot in his orchards, the old man chose to cast them into the sea. I have never forgotten this scene and the impact it had on me.
Business Owners, Workers Charge Israel Deliberately Targeted Lebanon's Economy (tags)
Business owners and factory workers in Lebanon are charging that Israel deliberately targeted the Lebanese economy in its month-long offensive. Democracy Now! producer Ana Nogueira files a report from Beirut on the long-lasting effects of the conflict on Lebanon's economy. [includes rush transcript] We turn now to Lebanon. The Israeli military's chief of staff was quoted as saying the Israeli army will complete a pullout from southern Lebanon within a few days.
Justice and Peace: Globalization from Below (tags)
Free trade is one of the most important idols that rule over us in Babylon..Deregulation as the owners of the world call this lawlessness leads to new forms of impoverishment..The greatest terrorist is neoliberal economicorder
Warnings of a US recession and global slowdown (tags)
Three commentaries published in the Financial Times over the past week have pointed to the increasing likelihood of a US recession that would have major implications for the global economy.
The world energy need will increase 50 percent by 2030 necessitating investments of billions in the energy infrastructures.. With its oil greed and balance of payments deficit, the US could endanger global peace and the stability of the world economy.
What links Lieberman, McCain, Gingrich, Perle, Kristol, and Hoffa? (tags)
Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain aren't merely "hawksih"; as "Honorary Co-Chairmen" of a pre-Iraq-war spin machine called The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, they were leading cheerleaders for a war that now threatens to mushroom out of all control--unless we remove the Liebermans, McCains, and their fellow war cheerleaders from our U.S. Congress.
Women, Autonomy & Creating a Caring Economy in Venezuela (tags)
Support for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela continues to grow, including in Los Angeles where grassroots communities gathered June 24 for a public event on Women, Autonomy & Creating a Caring Economy in Venezuela.
ACTION NEEDED: Defeat CA AB 2680 (tags)
Bill Goes After The Employers Who Hire Undocumented Workers
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Re-Regulation of the Economy (tags)
"Finance markets become judges over the economy punishing mistakes with (threaten-ed) capital flight." Resisting re-regulation represses blind spots and confuses the goat and the gardener, the market and the fire dept and the problem and the solution.
When People Become Commodities (tags)
By Jonathan Rowe
In payback time in the culture of fear, important trade, budget and cable access bills are passed in the dead of night. The dominant elite consciusness is frozen, refuses alternatives and stylizes bankruptcy as normal business practice.
May 1st: A new class being formed (tags)
This May Day showed our class is beginning to stir. When there is motion, conciousness of class interests is possible
The new typoe described by the sociologist Christopher Lasch in his book "The Blind Elite" is unscrupulously fixated on economic calculation.. He cannot feel a sense of responsibliity for the community of a city, region or country.
In "1984," George Orwell warned that war would become a domestic necessity to divert the people from economic contradictions. Inequality may promote productivity but also undermines public spirit and social ochesion
4/22 Protest of Bush regime H2 greenwashing (tags)
Reportback on GW Bush visit to CA Fuel Cell Partnership in West Sacramento. Protesters expose the Bush hydrogen (IPHE) plan as a continuation of petroleum addiction and corporate subsidies. Greenwashing of Earth Day, shame on the Petroleum Puppet pResident..
Immigration Policy: Send Us Your Poor, They Will Wind Up in Iraq (tags)
They are coming by the millions from all over the world. Let them come here. Let them find that there are not enough jobs. They will find the military to be the last resort when their welfare is cut off. And let them acquire Gulf War Syndrom (radiation sickness from uranium munitions).! It works just fine in the minds of the neo-cons.
Unions and the Growth Mania (tags)
The more productivity advances, the less labor is needed to realize a certain growth rate.. A de-acceleration can reduce the increase of labor productivity and lead to more employment.. A strategy beyond growth should be developed.
Capital Needs a Counterveiling Power (tags)
Functionless profits do not lead to more investments..The market, competition and profit are not ends in themselves. The economy exists for people, not vice versa.
American Workers Should Take a Lesson from the "Sissy" French (tags)
While young French workers express outrage at a proposed law making them endure three years of probation on a new job, U.S. workers wonder what the term "job security" means.
True Facts About Immigration
Iran’s Oil Exchange threatens the Greenback (tags)
"The Bush administration will never allow the Iranian government to open an oil exchange (bourse) that trades petroleum in euros. If that were to happen, hundreds of billions of dollars would come flooding back to the United States crushing the greenback and destroying the economy. This is why Bush and Co. are planning to lead the nation to war against Iran. It is straightforward defense of the current global system and the continuing dominance of the reserve currency....."
Life is More than Capital (tags)
Ulrich Duchrow and Franz Hinkelammert focus on the mis-developments in the third world where privatization of the water supply led to higher prices. international conglomer-ates made profits and paid no local taxes.
America's Glorious Empire of Debt (tags)
Economists have all become like rich notables in the time of Trajan, doing the emperor's work whether they are on his payroll or not.
Memorandum 2005: Alternative Economic Policy (tags)
In Germany and the US, the corporation is often stylized as the suffering servant. The market is made sacrosanct; all problems are defined as interferencs with the market. Profits soar and investments fall. Corporations pay increasingly less tax.
The South is Bled White (tags)
Since the Asian crisis and the 1980s, we have had massive net capital flows from the South to the North. The South is systematically bled white under the present conditions of the world economy.
WILL IRAN BRING REVOLUTION INTO THE USA ? (tags)
Iran’s Oil Exchange Threatens the Greenback by Mike Whitney www.dissidentvoice.org January 24, 2006
Today's internationalization of capital is part of a drastic crisis process.. In the 1970s, several hundred so-called multis existed worldwide. Today there are 60,000 multi-national businesses with 50 million employees.
U.S. TRADE DEFICIT DEVASTATING ECONOMY (tags)
The U.S. economy is being sold to the highest bidders in the world trade markets and our trade deficit is destroying our economy. Americans risk losing everything due to poor leadership in Washington D.C.
Instead of overcapacities and selling houses to each other, America is called to radical economic change and sustainability. The economy should servie humanity. Progress and work should be redefined for the post-fossil age.
The total commercialization of the world has triumphed..A dynamic of growth withdrawal could be initiated through a few simple measures..Internalizing costs would drastically change our societies..Democratic local initiatives are realistic.
No Room for Grace: Book Review (tags)
If abundance of life for all people is the heart of the biblical vision, economic thinking focuses on the shortage of resources.. Not subjecting everything to the market-benefit-calculus is vital.
The Coming Great Global Re-Balancing (tags)
On the economic horizon is an event that will exceed the Thirties.
Paul Samuelson Attacks a Dogma (tags)
The best-known economist of the world doubts that shifting services to india and buying cheap goods from China bring advantages to Americans when the income of workers falls through foreign competition. The rich North will lose its monopoly profits under the conditions of globalization.
Humane Freedom and the Free Market (tags)
"MOre free market is a social-political program involving a redistribution of power and money - in favor of a few special interests of the already rich and powerful.."
Competition is not a Natural Law (tags)
Instead of working out and overcoming the causal problems, people put a veil of the fun society over the whole-as in the times of Rome..Ideologues elevate the principle of competition into a natural law to immunize the market econmy from all criticism.
Since unemployment has reached an unparalleled dimension under the combination of increased productivity, global wage dumping, weakened unions and non-existent system competition, I prefer a radical redistribution of work and income.
America's Middle Class: In the Tank! (tags)
Just about everyday, the news is bad! The economy is going to hell, the Iraqi War continues unabated and the energy crisis is shifting into high gear. One direct result: The Middle Class is disappearing. No Middle Class, no democracy! And yet, our people seem to be sleepwalking through it all. Maybe, Carl Jung was right when he said, “The people can’t stand too much reality.”
Consumer Shock at the Pump (tags)
Life was disrupted when the world faced the first oil price crisis in the winter of 1973. People in the southern US are experiencing this today.. Around a quarter of US production was lost through the hurricane.
When Americans Learn Fear (tags)
The German writer for DIE ZEIT describes anoher scenario for an oil crisis in America that would be similar to past experiences: a sudden price jump on the oil market could accelerate the loss of trust in the American economy.
"The Market Has No Heart": Paul Samuelson (tags)
A post-Katrina economics must emphasize parallel worlds, solidarity and human dignity to safeguard long-term necessities and creativity. If all countries only become more competitive, mass unemployment will result. What is public must remain public.
Another world is possible. This is directed against the famous and thoughtless assumption of the impossibility of alterna-tives at the "end of history".. The substance of societies is tapped for financial institutions.
Exploding Profits and Stagnant Wages (tags)
"Domestic demand has stagnated for years.. Money for investments exists in excess in Germany. However investments declined 0.7% in 2004 despite record profits. Invest-ments fell for the fourth year in a row and are 13 percent lower than the 2000 level.."
Fa;se Hopes: The Debate about Growth (tags)
"Developed industrial countries do not need global economic growth but a better distribution of economic success.. The dependence of tax revenues and social spending on economic growth is a homemade fairytale.."
"Unfortunately some market fundamentalists are at work in the EU who denounce every-thing the state does to protect public goods as distortion of competition.. The globalized market shatters balance of public & private.."
A Second Economy: Overcoming the Hurricane of Unemployment (tags)
"One of the problems since the so-called turn of 1989 is that the market is regarded as an ultimate natural law. The whole world was required to transform their economies into market economies.."
Two colossal manmade disasters: Katrina and Alan (tags)
What becomes obvious when a Katrina comes along is that for the many "born to lead," there is only a scant few "committed to serve."
Working Three Hours a Day is Enough (tags)
"Keynes predicted 60 years ago that three hours work per day would be enough. Instead more than seven million (in Germany) are in a desperate situation.. The system logic is obviously exhausted.."
War, Capitalism and Elections (tags)
"In capitalist coutnries economic activity is directed toward enlarging the profits of the people who own the economy, which is why the economy doesn't give a damn whether you have a job or get paid an adequate wage, or can afford health care, or education for your children.."
The Real Disaster: Bush and the Democrats (tags)
If Bush hadn't sent everyone off to war and blown the budget on the military, there'd have been stronger dykes in New Orleans and more troops and equipment to help with the rescue effort.
"The US economy grows but depends on the rest of the world supplying hundreds of billions of more goods to the US every year than come from the US.. This will not last forever.."
"The Chinese have a strong national pride and are annoyed over American impairments of what they consider their sovereign rights including the Taiwan problem. They rightly view Washington's conduct as hegemonial.."
"Redistribution to poorer groups can increase growth..The public debate about the economy and economic policy is dominated by the practical necessity logic. Desires, interests and goals of social groups play no role in the discussion of economic reforms."
Disinformation as a Strategy of Power (tags)
"What caused this development? How could an economic system be built where ever-larger parts of the population are excluded from sharing in growth? ..In neoliberalism, the person is not regarded as a person but downgraded to mere labor power.."
Theological Reflections on Econmic Values (tags)
"The quality of a society is measured in its relations with the weakest..The economy exists for the sake of people..God's economy aims at the survival capacity of planet earth and its people..Our life is connected with all life.."
Europe and the Power of Capital (tags)
"The economic form of neoliberalism is based on political decisions, not practical economic necessities.. Only the democratic nation state can show the economy its place entitling it to exist for people and not vice versa.."
Ground Zero - (Californians Lead The Way Off The Cliff) (tags)
No Summary
Strategy for Another World: Walden Bello's De-Globalization (tags)
Walden Bello's de-=globalization hyas a power that can burst open the system. Redis-tributing work through radical reduction of working hours and exchanging part of paid work for more freedom anhd quality of life are two powerful steps to regaining human autonomy.
The New Inequality Machine (tags)
From the middle of the seventies, the interest rates exceeded the real growth rates. This made it even more attractive for owners of capital to invest their money in the financial markets rather than the real economy.
Economic Growth Alone Cannot Solve Social Problems (tags)
One of the central questions of this century is: How will we deal with the losers of this economic dynamic so we don't ignore their status as free citizens?.. No country has ever solved social problems by means of economic growth alone.
The Crisis of Work and its Future (tags)
"Producing more with less labor, distributing the fruits of technical progress better, crea-ting a new balance between required work and freely disposable time and giving every-one the possibility for a more relaxed life and more varied jobs are the new goals.."
Freedom according to the Stock Market (Gunter Grass) (tags)
"Our freely elected delegates are not free int heir decisions..Profit maximization is passed off as a basic value instead of the social obligation of property..Democracy perishes, not the state.."
China's Rise to a Political and Economic Superpower (tags)
The US is increasingly losing its economic sovereignty..For the Chinese the third Iraq war was the harshest defeat in the short history of reintegration in the world economy. The more the US becomes entrenched in unilateralism the easier China finds allies.
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"The Economy has Taken the State Hostage" (tags)
The economy has taken the state hostage and its power as a global player. Businessmen do not pay any taxes and demand fresh ransom money like every other extortioner.
Weak Dollar and Strong Bush: China and US Debts (tags)
To stabilize the value of the dollar, the US needs a daily currency inflow of $1.8 billion.. The budget plan of the White House rests on unrealistic assumptions.. The Bush administration assumes higher revenues by means of the tax cuts.
The economy is in a kind of balance with massive underemployment..Growth in purchasing power of upper income persons cannot balance the loss in purchasing power of normal, low-income and unempoyed persons..Unemployment is a capitalist law.
Other causes contribte to the economic misery besides the distribution problems. There are two developmental problems. There is the shift of profit from labor to capital. There is the worldwide opening of markets causing wage pressure.
Since Margaret Thatcher's brazen slogan `I dont know any society-only individuals', the old pre-fascist social Darwinism has become socially acceptable again..The wolf is praised as exemplary for our future economy.
THE NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY (tags)
---------------- REPUBLICAN BANKRUPTCY LAW EXPLAINED ----------------
Any realistic analysis of the Bush Administration and it's impact on the US and Global economy indicates that the US Dollar is being demolished. - Greensplat
Economists and their Ideologies (tags)
The conventional economy starts from the assumption that a rational economic actor always sees himself in competition to protect his own interests..This model corresponds to the reptile brain and a territorial conduct.. Cooperative being does not oppose nature..
The New American Slavery (tags)
How do you like it? Dry?
Every search for alternatives must question the "great narratives" of the free market, efficiency, competition and entrepreneurship. Economic laws could be analyzed as social constructions and economic models as social models.
A Snow Job on Social Security (tags)
Bush’s stump campaign to sell his divide-and-conquer plan for wrecking Social Security has been a failure. So now he’s sent out his Treasury Secretary to try crying “wolf” in hopes of scaring retirees and workers about the security of the system. It’s WMDs all over again.
Short List of "Practical Necessities" (tags)
When interests rise, fewer and fewer investments occur in production and employ-ment, unemployment increases and the economy goes flat. This analysis of the Austrian economy could help the US battle deregulation and corporate enrichment.
The Fifth World Social Forum (tags)
In the debates hardly any doubt existed in Porto Alegre that this alternative solidarian economy cannot be an island in the furious ocean of the capitalist world market. Thisalternative economy needs state assistance.
George W.'s Hidden Secret (tags)
The Future of Hydrogen Energy
Bush seems to have learned the same thing as former president Reagan from the histori-cal experience of the 1930s.. What helps are tax cuts and cuts in social spending.
The government must act when entrepre-neurial rationality leads to undesired results. Who else can act? The government must renew the jobs program.. The capitalist world economy is in an over-production crisis. Businesses ..are part of social life.
The predicted consequences of global warming are manifest.. In 2050 England will be half under water.. Production shifts to low-wage countries. Instead of preventing this shift, politics still urges all people to adjust to the little group of egoists.
Globalization and the Social State (tags)
The economy exists for people, not vice versa. The economy needs a framework offering orientation to economic actors and showing the limits of the tolerable. This framework is not a limitation of freedom but the necessary condition for success..
Part-Time Work for Everyone (tags)
The advantages of part-time work must gain general approval.. When the just distribution of work makes headway, the state and the economy will be freed from a considerable part of social expenditures and cuts in individual living standards will be balanced.
The deficit can only be lowered by devaluing the dollar at least 20 to 30 percent.. In 1963 the deficit amounted to five percent of econo-mic output. This changed within eight years into a surplus of one percent. Economic growth, tax increases andspending discipline
US After the Election: Permanent Alarm (tags)
The election was an expression of fear combined with ignorance about the economy. The American majority that voted for Bush is a case study of repression. That the economy is sick, the country isolated and the ground begins to totter is denied.
With multiple crises—war, budget deficits and a collapsing dollar—on the horizon, the holier-than-thou Bush administration in the second term is likely to find itself facing a disaster of biblical proportions.
WAR, CAPITALISM & ELECTIONS: An Interview w STEPHEN GOWANS – Canadian Political Essayist (tags)
Read ANGIE's – regular and erudite Indybay-IMC (Indybay.org) Poster fm Canada – incisive interview with Canadian political essayist STEPHEN GOWANS. Angie has scored a previous interview with Israeli pro-Palestinian human rights activist Ran Ha Cohen. We await similar interviews with Uri Avnery and others who speak directly to issues of global justice – as well as global resistance to imperialist racism and the elite capitalists' rapaciousness that will gamble ALL our lives. We, finally, are at an especially critical world cross-roads: we can choose illumination or illusion, enlightenment or inconsequence, mutual respect or profligate death.
When the social contract, the social compromise between labor and capital, is scorned, people become wolves to one another.. The dance around the golden calf is already a disaster..
Affluenza - The Consumer Virus: The Market is our God (tags)
We fear meaninglessness and uselessness. Therefore we spend our whole life persuading ourselves we are invincible. One of the tricks for assuring ourselves of eternal life is consumption..The world econo-my is an altar for consumers and investors..
China Expects the Collapse of the Dollar (tags)
Since 2001 the dollar has lost 40% of its value; half of the loss has occurred since April 2003. In 2004 alone, exports from China to the US rose 35%. China depends on American consumers asmuch as the US depends on China's financing of deficits.
Iraqi oil is lost to the world market. Instead of the rosy promises of the neoconservatives who wanted to turn Iraq into America's private gas station, the opposite is happening.. The whole world has to pay for the disappeared oil on account of US crimes against Iraqis.
Building Bridges Radio: The Jobless "Recovery" (tags)
Building Bridges: Your community and Labor Report presents this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON WEB LINK BELOW
The Demon and its Conjuring Trick: Money (tags)
"The light in which the glboal financial markets operate is very dim.. Unveiling the money fetish is a task of economic literacy. The monetary sphere seems uncoupled from the real economy, the world of work.."
"For the richestg 1%, the Reagan tax cuts were pure elixer.. Reagan's budgets slashed social spending. Domestic discretionary spending was the special target.. Hardest hit were programs for low-income Americans.."
Inflationary Deflation or the Dominance of the Global Financial Markets (tags)
"When real interests are above real growth rates of the GDP, debtors are structurally overstrained. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the financial crises of the past decade suggest that a kind of post-modern `plundering capitalism' is arising.."
"Rainer Roth in The House of Cards puts the mechanisms of the capitalist economy on trial.. To counter the long-term descent of profit rates, the tax burden for businesses, a constant 21% from 1960 to 1980, has spiraled down to only 8% today.."
US Expert Sees Danger of World Recession (tags)
"The new administration elected in November 2004 must systematically reduce the deficits. Otherwise an inflation threatens. America within the next two years could lead into a recession.."
Economics for a Shrinking Planet (tags)
The expansion of humanity's ecological impact on the planet cannot continue much longer without violating natural thresholds. To survive, we must develop a new way of thinking about our economic activities. This article briefly describes the author's approach to such a new mode of thought.
BTL:U.S. Poverty on the Rise, According to Census Bureau (tags)
Interview with Scott Klinger, co-director of United for a Fair Economy's Responsible Wealth Project, conducted by Between the Lines' Scott Harris
Bush Administration Endangers the Middle Class (tags)
"Nation-wide the social descent of many families sees a real threat.. the number of newly created jobs still lags behind the population growth. More Americans have been completely dismissed from the labor market.."
The real stakes of the election (tags)
Social Security is Not for Sale (tags)
The market is a tool effective after fundamental political questions are answered: What kind of society do we want? Are education, health care, housing, water and land public goods or privileges?
LIBERATING THE ISRAELI ECONOMY FROM OCCUPATION (tags)
It surveys the Israeli government's attempt to liberate the economy from socialist occupation. It looks at the fight over the just passed 2005 budget and gives a cautious "green light" to the direction of the reforms.
"Wars are Good for the Economy": The Global Free Trade System (tags)
"The international free market was created artificially in the 18th and 19th centuries with the force of the English colonial state and did not develop naturally from the free exchange of goods as neoliberals constantly claim.."
Knowledge is Power or Life in the Pseudo (Money) Economy (tags)
"When one hears the parties, they all seem to refuse responsibility and are only inte-rested in preserving their power, not in any particular task of doing something for our country or its people.. Who can endure this Punch-and-Judy show of pseudo-debates?"
Politicians need to know... (tags)
What every politician ought to know before taking office
Brave New World of Work: The Political Economy of Insecurity (tags)
"The utopia of the free market has an unintentional upshot: the Brazilianization of the West.. What is most remarkable is the new similarity of development profiles, the incursion of the precarious, intermittent, fluffy and unsanctioned in the Western bulwarks.."
Building Bridges Radio- Class War with Bill Moyers, Meizhu Lui, and Chuck Collins (tags)
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Reports brings you this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON LA INDYMEDIA LINK
Anti-FTAA initiative in Paraguay (tags)
The anti-FTAA movement considers that this agreement will mean subdue mechanisms for our nations. The governments will be subdued to this mechanisms or game rules that respond to the interests of the big corporations and which will negatively affect the social and sensitive sectors of the national economy. They state that the FTAA is supposed to be a stage of negotiation with low operative costs for corporations, but at the same time it impose concepts and laws that won’t allow the governments to make public policies encouraging the strength of the little and middle companies and national industries.
Lying About Reagan's Tax Cuts (tags)
America's Job Wonder is Pure Statistics (tags)
"Everything is only marketing.. The new statistical methods only help marketing to keep the high deficits in the US finacable. The data does not reflect reality in the US.. America wrestles with a so-called double deficit.."
US Economy as an Accelerated War Economy (tags)
"A recovery based on job losses, wage cuts, increased health care costs, an incomparable increase in student fees and growing poverty is not John Kerry's idea of an American economy that works for America's workers.."
"The neoliberal medicine Less State and More Market does not work.. That the neoliberal medicine does not heal the economy and society but damages them must be clear to everyone who hasn't suc-cumbed to the neoliberal delusion."
Is China weeks away from 'Great Depression'? (tags)
Already in need of a $45 billion bailout, the CBRC suspended all lending for three days. The enormity of China's banking problem is dawning on everyone--the system is nearing meltdown.
Kerry isn't as ignorant on economic matters as he sounds.... (tags)
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Wages up for the well-off, but not for others (tags)
The gap between workers in the 90th earning percentile and the 10th has never been wider. Said Ann Owen, economist at Hamilton College (NY) and former Federal Reserve economist (DC), "we can probably project a future growth in inequality."
Ford: Holding America Hostage to Oil (tags)
Environmental and Human Rights Activists Scale Downtown Skyscraper and Release Giant Banner to Protest US Oil Addiction
This is the world that has been pulled down over your eyes to blind you from the truth...
The New America- Darth VAder or Frankenstein's Monster? ( Part 2 Of 2) (tags)
Using unusual personal experience and studied general observation to denote the horrific transformation of America, via mass-conditioning, pop-culture media programming, the military, and of course the legislature and police to train and harvest the slaves to serve the New World Mafia's black market profits and control.
Nature as Healer and Teacher (tags)
Nature is a healer and teacher, a wounded healer and scorned teacher, a majestic fountain of awe, wonder and inspiration.. Nature cries in pain because she is reduced to a free good, external or sink by a one-dimensional economism.
The Crash has Already Begun (tags)
"The crash has already begun! Every crash comes inthree steps, the stock market crash, the banking industry crash and finally the real crash, the collapse of the economy, businesses, jobs and the financial system.. The coming depression is the correction.."
The imperial counter offensive: contradictions, challenges and opportunities. (tags)
A victory or prolonged war by the guerrillas in Colombia will provide breathing room for the rest of the left. Thus it is essential that maximum support and solidarity be extended to the Colombian struggle. Internationalism is not only the solidarity network against the new imperial military offensive, in general, but in support of the Colombian peasants and workers organized in their "Peoples Army."
US Gov knew about the inevitability of 9/11, beginning of the move towards martial law. If it is inevitable, can we bring it sooner and catch rulers off guard before prepared?
After the Failure of the World Trade Conference (tags)
"There is growing skepticism toward the past structure of the WTO and the procedures and results of previous world trade conferences. With the founding of the WTO in 1994, all 148 member countries were promised that there would `only be winners'."
Our over reliance on cars endangers us all. Pollution from our primitive, gas-guzzling vehicles poisons our air and damages our health. The economy shudders with every increase in fuel costs.
"Growth, prosperity, free trade, liberal world economy and international division of labor are all ideologically charged terms. They re-flect veiled interests more than a search for truth. The starting-point for an alternative econmics is an ideology-critical position."
Are the Isrealis willing to start WW III ? (tags)
Please help to spread this information far and wide, it is the present reality and it has vast implications.
The White Collar Migration - Part 1 (tags)
As Economy Gains, Outsourcing Surges
Yes, indeed — the Bush boom has begun at last. (tags)
This week's report of a barnburner 7.2 percent rise in gross domestic product is very significant. It informs us of the likelihood of a true recovery boom — call it the Bush boom — in the months and quarters ahead.
Payrolls plunge 93,000, but unemployment rate edges down (tags)
Catch this: Payrolls plunge 93,000, but unemployment rate edges down. Hellloooooo! The number of people receiving a paycheck goes down but unemployment is down? I don't think so. The two are mutually contradictory.
GLOBALIZATION: A SIMPLE DEFINITION-“Diez horas con la globalización”(google) (tags)
A SIMPLE DEFINITION OF WHAT THE GLOBALIZATION IS. According to the book “DIEZ HORAS CON LA GLOBALIZACION” (amazon, google, yahoo, netbiblo, Foro-los retos de la globalización, elcorteingles, netbiblo, indymedia.org..) Author: Oscar Sanchez Fernandez de la Vega (google). ofdelavega@edu.xunta.es
Jobs Go Bye-Bye Under Bush (tags)
Another fine example of the ecomomic policies of the cheap labor conservatives.
WESLEY CLARK: HOPE AGAINST HOPE (tags)
THIS IS A PEACE CANDIDATE?
FEELS LIKE 1938 ALL OVER AGAIN: AUSTRIA CELEBRATES ANSCHLUSS WITH CALIFORNIA (tags)
After partying the night away, Austrian dignitaries and admirers in Schwarzenegger's home region celebrated his win by claiming him anew as one of their own.
Interesting article from the Asia Times. A different perspective than the usual propaganda from our Wall Street-controlled media.
Son of Nazi Becomes Governor (tags)
Its truly an incredible country where the son of a Nazi, admitted sexual harasser, and horrible actor becomes governor of the largest state in the United States, which also happens to be the fifth largest economy in the world. Like Don King says only in America.
California Recall Reflections (tags)
One activist's reflections on the California recall, how I voted and wish others did. Also, a missed opportunity which none of the candidates decided to take
The Cancun Summit-WTO on the edge of abyss (tags)
WTO
The president's approval ratings soared following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In recent weeks, those numbers have dropped to the lowest levels of his presidency, with approval ratings of 49 percent in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll out Wednesday night and 50 percent in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released Monday. HA HA HA!!!
34.6 Million In US In Poverty In 2002 (tags)
The wonders of Bushonomics unfold for all. Reverse Robin Hood Syndrome - take from the poor and give to the rich. Of course the Dems haven't a clue either - afterall they share the same bed. Buncha Whores.
Between Irag and a Hard Place (tags)
War at home and abroad
The Environment/Energy Balance (tags)
YES, I am a tree hugger. I drove down the Western Australian Coast with my feet up on the dash board, meditated and danced joyously by the rivers, strummed my guitar by the ocean and sang “Imagine” with my mates… Those days were much simpler; the environment/energy balance was really just a single issue then. Social balance was achieved by the extremes on both sides, the greenies against the capitalists. The environment cannot be looked at as a single issue anymore as the complexity of global war has heated up. A whole new paradigm of cause and effect is relevant on how we address the energy/environment balance.
U.S. Hands Off North Korea! (tags)
With Over 7,000 Civilians Killed in the U.S./British War on Iraq and thousands more civilians dead in Afghanistan, War Crazed Imperialists Scope Out Next Victims!
I want every ELF activist to know what a kick regular old working people like myself get out of picking up a corporate paper and seeing news of expressive actions against the profits and peace-of-mind of death-inducing corporate/consumer capitalists who are tyring to trap us in sprawl and its excessories.
Solidarity Economics is Ecology (tags)
How can there be a global movement with no platform and no economic vision and leaders who hide? If the Brazilian constitution defends the right of the starving to steal food, then surely the poor of the world have the right - under any way of thinking - to steal back control over their lives and their local economies.
Climate Change Endangers Growth of World Economy (tags)
"The solar architect Rolf Disch in Freiburg sold the first solar-energy-plus houses that produce more energy with the help of the sun than is consumed in these energy-houses. Every homeowner becomes an energy-seller. Economy and ecology harmonize.."
Jobless? Blame the System, not Yourself! (tags)
"The economy dictates how many will be unemployed because no jobs are available. 10% of the workforce don't get lazy at a certain point of the business cycle..Each downturn sends millions more into unemp-loyment. Unemployment is a social problem."
Libertarians who loathe Israel (tags)
Irrational hatred for "an isolated Sparta, bristling with weaponry and little else" prompts libertarians to forget their welfare economics. For example, Raimondo menacingly warns that without US aid, Israel would cease to exist... Come again?
Protest message to White House: More jobs, less bull (tags)
CHICAGO – As George W. Bush settles into his Crawford ranch for his carefree, month-long vacation, working families are saddled with worries about jobs, health care and the state of the economy.
"We celebrate the victory over the recession while several hundred thousand employees are dismissed every month', decried Calif congressman Pete Stark. `It would be almost hilarious if it weren't so sad.'..Employers prefer reducing personnel to save costs.."
"Last Convulsion of US Power" (tags)
"Facts interest me, not theories. the fact is the US consumes more than it produces. There is a gigantic growing annual US foreign trade deficit of $500 billion.. The wars of the US are an attempt to prove something that is disappearing, the global power of US."
DEAN TO PRESIDENT BUSH: "IT'S TIME FOR THE TRUTH." (tags)
Former Vermont governor says American people should know the true intentions behind Bush administration's agenda (July 25, 2003)
"Another world is possible and another economy is necessary, an economy in which massive social resources are used according to plan..`We are attacked as in the dying phase of the Weimar republic'." This review is translated from the German.
Deflation Threatens. A Specter goes about in Germany (tags)
"The IMF recently warned of a deflationary development and a dangerous intensification of the economic crisis in Germany..Deflation is characterized by a lowering of price levels.. The cause is a surplus of goods over the demand for goods.." Translated from German
On the Human Right to Laziness (tags)
"Paul Lafargue spoke satirically about the first sinister acceleration thrusts of early industry: "All individual and social misery comes from a passion for work. O laziness, be merciful with your endless misery!: O laziness, you are the balm for the pains!"
Working Clas U.S. Perspectives 2003 -2004 (tags)
Working Class
More State Intervention (tags)
"The German economy has skidded into a recession.. In a recession, the state must take a leadership role in solving the main problem, inadequate demand.." Translated from the German
The Kennedy sycophant's guide to oppressive taxes (tags)
Does the Bush tax plan favor the wealthy? Well, yeah... Let the Democrats and their ilk pool their resources to subvert the Constitution and help "the people" build a Welfare State -- the rest of declare this taxation (read: legal plunder) to be oppressive.
As the ignorant sniveling sycophants of the Bush Junta continuing shoving the heads ever further up their ass more people are beginning to question the wisdom of that policy.
Broke and bitterly split, California is on skid row (tags)
The state of California, as of midnight last night, was officially broke. The richest, most populous state in the union - by some measures the world's fifth biggest economy - is facing a budget deficit of $38bn (£23bn).
Can anyone help me. I am gitting mixed messages from Daveman. I cannot make up my min if he considers me a friend or not. That do YOU think?
AS THE ECONOMY CRUMBLES - June 16, 2003 (tags)
Summarizing the crappy economic news of the week.
"The radicalisation of the strikes, the images of violence like those seen on Tuesday evening in Paris could disturb consumers' peace of mind"
AMonomaniac with a Bad idea-Bush against the Economy (tags)
Bush and the economy
Tax Cuts and Class Warfare (tags)
An argument against the beneficial results of tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down economics.
Russia after the War in Irag (tags)
Russia
U.S. Hands Off North Korea! (tags)
With 9,000 Civilians Killed in the U.S./British Wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, War Crazed Imperialists Scope Out Next Victims!
Inside the 'Country'-Club for Growth (tags)
In 2002, the fiscally conservative Club targeted 19 congressional races and won 17. The 9,000-member Club is the No. 1 source of campaign funds for Republican congressional candidates, aside from the party itself. It targets Republican incumbents whom its officers deem too liberal...
Questions of Life and Death (tags)
"Many politicians lack a moral imperative today. They act as though they have no options because the economy dictates conditions. This is not true. Politicians can still make decisions in the interests of many, not in the interests of a few.." From German
Jobless rate climbs to nine-year high (tags)
EAST CHICAGO, Ill. – Bruce Gaddy is single. Tony McIntosh is married and has two children. Both live in this working-class suburb, 25 miles south of downtown Chicago. And both are unemployed: Gaddy because his plant closed, McIntosh because he was “down-sized” after working 22 years for AT&T.
Images from the immigrant workers march and rally in LA's garment district. May 1, 2003.
Miwon - Points of Unity (tags)
May 1, 2003 MIWON – multi –ethnic immigrant workers organizing network (Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Garment Workers Center (GWC), Korean Immigrant Workers Center (KIWA), Pilipino Workers’ Center (PWC)
Against Social Darwinism (tags)
"The conquest of Africa and large parts of Asia was not morally justified by anything. Only peace is morally justified. Today social Darwinism appears in the guise of Anglo-Saxon capitalism..Ecology and pure market ideology are in conflict.." Translated German
Tell Ford to improve gas mileage! (tags)
Cars and light trucks guzzle 40% of U.S. oil and emit 20% of the nation's carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. Each gallon of gasoline burned pumps 28 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere-19 from the tailpipe and nine pounds from upstream refining, transporting and refueling.
Against Social Darwinism (tags)
"The conquest of Africa and large parts of Asia by invading European forces was not morally justified. Only peace is morally justified..Today social Darwinism appears in the guise of Anglo-Saxon capitalism..Ecology and pure market ideology are in conflict."
Class War heats up in the USA (tags)
Class War
Take the Next Step: Join the Global Boycott for Peace* (tags)
Don't let your money flow freely and ignorantly into the pockets of those whose actions you oppose. Disobey with your Dollars!
U.S. Lost the War Before It Started (tags)
Undoubtedly the U.S. will experience a military victory in Iraq as well as a complete and thorough occupation of the entire country but a military occupation does not a society make.
Proudhon and the Condemnation of the Charity (tags)
Proudhon and the Condemnation of the Charity
The next time some clown tells you "War is good for the economy" remember this.
Craig Rosenbaugh on the Anti-War Struggle (tags)
An excellent analysis of why the peace movements fail to stop war and a call for radical direct action.
Craig Rosebraugh on the Anti-War struggle (tags)
As the U.S. led military campaign gets fully under way in the very near future, the question remains… how far is the anti-war movement in the United States willing to go to stop the U.S. government and its unceasing atrocities? How far are you willing to go, what are you willing to do to stop the massive bloodshed once again caused by the U.S. government?
A Portrait of Evil :The Grand Deception Exposed (tags)
I provide this information so you will understand the true nature of the New World Order and who and where the secret rulers of planet Earth are. This is who pulls the strings of GW Bush and all of his compatriots. Stop being deceived and focus on the correct targets!
Fear of a spiral into Depression as job losses mount (tags)
Dismal sales at Christmas time were propped up by deflationary price cuts, and now the retail sector is among the hardest hit as one third of a million jobs are slashed in February. Not coincidentally, the same rise of the Extreme Right Wing is taking place as was seen during the depression of the 30s, with the same drive to seek relief in aggressive wars of conquest...
SIGN ON - Int'l call Boycott US war Iraq (tags)
This is an international call for a boycott of the US war economy. The American economy is directly linked to the war on Iraq. Oil companies and arms companies, in particular, stand to make huge profits from a war on Iraq. The Bush Administration is prepared to go to war unilaterally, with or without a UN resolution. Consumers worldwide can say "NO"
Deforestation is the Single Most Important Component of Global Warming! (tags)
The number one threat to humanity and in fact to all of life on this planet, contrary to the official U.S. position that terrorism represents the greatest threat, is without question deforestation.
Great Depression. George Bush vs Einstein on economic policy (tags)
According to the mathematician, Albert Einstein, the policies of George Bush are likely to result in another Great Depression. To quote a recurring quip, 'I know George Bush, and let me tell you, George Bush is no Albert Einstein.'
From the fine "journalists" at the FAUX News Network. So-called "patriotic" Americans are boycotting French Cheese and Wine!
The peace protestors inspire hope in a nation that seemed headed for its own destruction.
Democratic Socialism: A Transformational Project (tags)
Democratic socialism as a transformational process could remedy the social coldness and ecological blindness of neoliberalism and its total absolute market. This article is translated from the German in: Utopie kreativ 2000.
US reached debt limit, unemployment rampant (tags)
US national debt nears $6.4 TRILLION limit, so the US Treasury Dept. asks for higher debt ceiling for the Fed Govt; U.S. Economy in Worst Hiring Slump in 20 Years...
The Will to Paralysis: The Crisis of Shareholder Capitalism (tags)
Scapegoats or black sheep are used to evade the crisis of the system. Considering matters more exactly would be very appropriate. Are manifestations of corruption and tax evasion normal side-effects of a system fixated on money?
Which Direction is the US Heading? (tags)
For non-economists, income millionaires obviously have much less reason to spend this extra money than households keeping their heads above water with several jobs.. When Bush began his term of office, the Budget Office forecast surplus of $3 trillion..
Bush policies blasted At Home (tags)
George W. Bush attempted to win backing for his agenda of tax cuts for the rich and war on Iraq in his Jan. 28 State of the Union Speech. But mayors, governors, members of Congress and leaders of mass organizations sharply rejected his policies.
AFL-CIO tells Bush and Congress: Get real on the economy (tags)
(see related story below) The AFL-CIO charged in a Jan. 27 report that, despite President Bush’s rosy claims, the economy is in worse shape than it was two years ago when measured by all the key indicators important to working families.
Bush's state of the union speech-The die is cast (tags)
War Speech
No to Capitalist War, Yes to Anarchist Revolution! (tags)
The following is the text from a new poster from the Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives (FRAC). The poster is the first in a series and is in both english and spanish. This poster examines the root causes of the impending war, possible methods of resistance here in North America, and our vision of a free society.
Support For a War With Iraq Weakens (tags)
Majority in Poll Critical of Bush's Record on Economy
A Coalition of the Elites (tags)
The extent of this admiistration's deceiving of the public is rather spectacular. I sometimes have the feeling that I don't live in one of the oldest democracies but in the Philippines under a new Marcos. This interview is translated from the German in Der Spiegel
Report on Layoffs Killed (tags)
The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy, has quietly killed off a Labor department program that tracked mass layoffs by US companies. This article originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle is available on www.corpwatch.org
The European Summit in Copenhagen (tags)
European summit
Bush plans $ 600 billion gift to rich (tags)
The battle over how best to boost a sagging economy became a matter of public debate last week with Democrats in the House of Representatives and President Bush introducing competing plans.
Join The Localization Lobby (tags)
Localization as the only means to take back our economy and our democracy.
Bush: I'll Arrange Another Terror Attack If Economy Keeps Sinking (tags)
President Bush has warned that a major attack on the United States by Iraq or a group working on its behalf could cripple the American economy. (note: 'Group working on their behalf' = The Bush Administration)
WAR(?) ECONOMY: IS THE PUBLIC TAKING ISSUE? Are these poll ?'s a coincidence? (tags)
interesting array of poll questions at the augusta chronicle http://augustachronicle.com/polls/ coincidence or no?
"Violently shattering the cartel of OPEC is discussed openly in the US..This calculation is irrational and can only accelerate the crash Less peace will be brought to Iraq..The US creates a qualitatively new state of emergency through its attack as defense."
Weaning Off Fossil Fuels (tags)
American rooftops can be the Persian Gulf of solar energy. After Australia, no developed nation on Earth gets more annual sunlight than the United States. In addition, wind is now the fastest-growing energy source worldwide and one of the cheapest. But wind and solar power generate less than 2% of U.S. power. We can do better. We can increase auto fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon. The technology to achieve that goal exists now.
Ecuador-Lucio Gutierrez opens a new revolutionary stage (tags)
Ecuador
The Resistance calls for the implementation of a gift economy based on service and not purchase.
Spread Some Sanity: Attack Global Warming Not Iraq!
Leftists Working for Poverty! (tags)
Want more poverty in the 3d world? Don't miss the next World Bank protest! Thanks Walter E. Williams! We are so lucky to have you.
The Appetite of Leviathan (tags)
Money replaces the `cosmos' as the unifying social characteristic. Every pack of wolves is more socially organized than free enterprise persons..The little monsters should be tamed by the enormous monster"Leviathan". The state share has increased everywhere.
globalisation means war (tags)
The global Swiss banking syndicate that is backing the war effort
California at a Crossroad? (tags)
There are many economic indications that the U.S.A. Titanic may be on the brink of sinking. Will California go down with it, or is it time for us in Cali to break away and become a lifeboat?
Socialist Planning -- Liberation from the Market (tags)
The following is written by the Maoist political economist Raymond Lotta. It is excerpted from a larger discussion on http://2changetheworld.info where Ray posted a series of comments called "Socialist planning vs. Market Socialism."
How Revolution Can Overturn Consumer Society (tags)
The following was written by political economist Raymond Lotta -- as part of a longer analysis of "Socialist Planning vs. Market Socialism." It was posted as part of the debate over revolutionary strategy in the General Discussion forum of http://2changetheworld.info
Consumers On Strike Against the War (tags)
Oklahoma activists have launched Consumers On Strike Against the War. They are advocating that people target an economic attack on the white collar big money psycopaths running our economy and government (collectively known as the War Party) by spending less money and shifting their remaining purchases to locally owned, independently operated, businesses and cooperatives or collectives.
Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein (tags)
Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition.
"Pig Nation": editorial cartoon by Mike Flugennock (tags)
Americans, don't let our brave troops' sacrifices be in vain! Flex up that credit card, do your duty! Consume for your Country!
[PFMPE] Prospects and Prescription of Mathematically Perfected Economy (tags)
Mathematically perfected economy: Singular prescription for true free enterprise, and full, unimpeded prosperity. (See online version for article, complete with images.)
Argentina: How To Establish Mathematically Perfected Economy (tags)
The world's "financiers" would not have us understand how "Argentina's" "economy" collapsed under insoluble debt — because the debt of Argentina was ultimately multiplied beyond the means of Argentina, without rendering Argentina anything but multiplying debt.
LIFE AND DEBT Goes Nationwide (tags)
LIFE AND DEBT /*** (Not rated) October 26, 2001 New Yorker Films presents a documentary produced and directed by Stephanie Black. Narration written by Jamaica Kincaid. Running time: 86 minutes. No MPAA rating.
EPI: A Tale of Two Tax Cuts (tags)
Republicans are trying to push through even MORE tax cuts for the rich. So what does history tell us? During a recession in 1975, President Ford's tax cut was targeted at low- and moderate-income families and helped to stimulate private consumption, putting the economy back on its feet. By comparison, President Reagan's tax cut in 1981 disproportionately benefited those at the top of the income scale and ultimately did nothing for the slumping economy until 1983.
For California's Independence (tags)
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT IN THESE DIRE TIMES: We must not continue to be held hostage to U.S. monopoly finance KKKapital!!!
California's Independence (tags)
If the Bush regime is so determined to launch a military conquest, then he should do so WITHOUT CALIFORNIA!!!
World leaders defend globalisation in face of protests (tags)
An anti-globalization protester strolls past a burning car as widespread clashes with police erupted though out Genoa July 20, 2001. Police have been expecting violence as some 150,000 anti-globalization protesters took to the streets as Group of Eight leaders gathered for a 3 day meeting in the northern Italian city. (Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)
California Violates Constitution With Tax Grab (tags)
State of California Violates Constitution Through Illegal Tax on Imports of Products from Other States. Californians Must Protest This Egregious Grab of Power Today.
United for a Fair Economy Brings 'Economic Apartheid' message To Shadow (tags)
United for a Fair Economy Brings "Economic Apartheid" Message To Shadow Convention "Poverty and Wealth Gap Day"; August 14th Program Challenges Parties' Neglect of "Real Issues"
United for a Fair Economy Brings "Economic Apartheid" Message to Shadow (tags)
United for a Fair Economy Brings "Economic Apartheid" Message As Convener of Shadow Convention "Poverty and Wealth Gap Day" August 14